Posted by   on (March 11, 2013, 14:29 GMT)

Boycott's comments are just getting pitiful. First he says NZ will get cleaned up, and now that England have been dominated and forced to bat out for a draw he blames the pitch. I agree with SJC1000 NZ were the ones who lost out because of the day lost. If there was anything more in the pitch the England would be in for more embarrassment now with a 0-1 deficit to the No.8 side in the world.

Posted by   on (March 11, 2013, 0:21 GMT)

Why is there not a reserve day for test cricket? With one day washed out, it would of been great to have had another day in reserve to cover.

I think the other issue Mr Boycott has missed, is NZ is currently having a very dry patch...and had we had the usual rain over the last couple of months, the pitch would of probably been a lot less flat than it was.

@ TheBigBoodha. Finn played 1 test in India!!! He took 4 wickets at 29 on a road! A tad better than Starc, Siddle etc.

The pitch was good for batting sure but it wasn't perfect, while watching on TV i saw a lot of minor swing (which is all you need to get a nick) and quite a few balls deck off the seam. I'm no groundsmen but preparing a pitch to break up on day 4 and 5 along with unpredictable weather would be a very tough thing to do. The test pitches in Australia have been "too good" lately while in India they break up at the end of day 1 for the spinners, so don't be too critical of the pitch. You might say England gave most of their wickets away, thats just part of the mental game of test cricket. A full 5 days would have been very interesting

There didn't seem to be too many demons in the pitch on day 2 when England got skittled. Rusty performance with poor shots = yes, but complacency and toothlessness just as prominent. Man up England!

The pitch seems to be getting a hell of a lot of unfair stick here. This was less than 4 days of cricket, added to the fact that England had no interest in scoring runs for the last 5 sessions of it. Even with an extra 2 sessions added on to the game, this could have been really interesting. All it would have taken is for Trott to have gone early or Prior to have made an early error, and there could have been a result despite a day and a bit being ashed out.

Unfortunately England and NZ's pace bowlers are both pretty toothless when the tracks are evenly slightly flat, as we have seen many times in recent series. The Poms are lucky Dhoni didn't get his way with the curators when they toured India, or the same would have happened there - although it must be remembered that while Anderson took a reasonable 12 wickets at 30 apiece, Finn was the second best at 4 wickets.