From Mount Maunganui to Wellington, plus a loss in Hamilton in between, England’s batting failings against the Black Caps were undeniably a concerning trend.<\/p>\n
Yes, captain Harry Brook lost all three tosses to expose those batters to the worst of conditions on at least two occasions.<\/p>\n
Yes, New Zealand’s 50-over side, with their 93% win ratio at home since 2019, provide one of the toughest challenges in world sport.<\/p>\n
But with four Ashes bankers in England’s top five – and the fifth a possible starter in Jacob Bethell – they returned only one innings above 34 between them across three matches.<\/p>\n
Bethell, Brook, Ben Duckett, Jamie Smith and Joe Root batted 15 times collectively in the 50-over series and together had nine single-figure scores. <\/p>\n
No-one would call that ideal.<\/p>\n
“It’s a different form of the game and it’s a completely different kind of challenge that we’re going to be confronted with as well,” said coach Brendon McCullum, denying batters would be scarred by the 3-0 series sweep heading into the Ashes.<\/p>\n
At no point have England been in New Zealand because they see it as the optimal way to prepare for five Tests in Australia.<\/p>\n
These fixtures were part of their wider schedule, dictated by those with a grip on the purse strings and who sign broadcast deals.<\/p>\n
England have, instead, tried to make the most of the cramped schedule and ease players back into action after a post-summer break.<\/p>\n
Steve Smith’s Sheffield Shield century appeared ominous, but fellow Australia middle-order batter Travis Head is also battling through white-ball matches against India, with no score above 30 in four attempts.<\/p>\n
Had Root stroked New Zealand’s medium-fast pacers for a century in front of Aotearoa’s grass banks, few would have said it mattered when it came to facing Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood in the Perth cauldron with a different ball. <\/p>\n
The reverse must also be true.<\/p>\n
“Jamie Smith, Joe Root and Ben Duckett, they’ll be better for the run, too,” McCullum said. <\/p>\n
“I’m sure they’ll be better for it with the prep that we’ve had with the other Test guys [bowlers Mark Wood, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson] who’ve been here for a while, too, we’ll have no excuses come Australia.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Mount Maunganui to Wellington, plus a loss in Hamilton in between, England’s batting failings against the Black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-542100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115474685189903679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}