Conway, Mitchell centuries power New Zealand to crushing eight-wicket win

New Zealand landed the first blow in their World Cup warm-up series in Cardiff - and were able to rush off the pitch in good time for the All Blacks' opening fixture of the rugby version in Paris - as England's "Class of 2019" reunion was gatecrashed by a brace of outstanding, uncompromising centuries from Devon Conway and Daryl Mitchell.

Set what seemed to be a competitive 292 for victory, after a hard-worked England innings featuring four separate half-centuries, including from Ben Stokes on his return to the ODI format, New Zealand instead inched ahead of the required rate from the outset of the powerplay, and on a pitch that seemed to have eased up in the cooler evening conditions, accelerated with dismissive power through the back-end to land a crushing eight-wicket win with 26 balls left unused.

Conway, fittingly, finished the match with his only six of his innings, effortlessly launched back over Liam Livingstone's head, having set New Zealand's unflustered tempo throughout an exceptional knock of 111 not out from 121 balls. However, it was Mitchell who applied the muscle, clobbering seven sixes and seven fours in his unbeaten 118 from 91, to provide the lion's share of an unbeaten 180-run stand for the third wicket.

It left England's earlier efforts looking distinctly huff and puff - rarely has this trend-setting white-ball team been left looking quite so off the pace after batting through their 50 overs. Jos Buttler top-scored with a grafting knock of 72 from 68, after he and Stokes had built on a fluent 54 off 53 from Dawid Malan at the top of the order, while Livingstone's first fifty in any international since June 2022 - a free-wheeling knock of 52 from 40 balls - had looked like being the difference between the teams, with Conway admitting after the match that their total of 291 for 6 had been "slightly above par".

Instead, Conway took it upon himself to make a mockery of such assessments. By the end of the powerplay, he and Will Young - preferred to Finn Allen at the top of New Zealand's order after a stellar year in the 50-over format - had put them 11 runs to the good at 61 for 0. Much of that momentum came courtesy of a wayward opening burst from Reece Topley, whose two overs were picked off for 25 runs, while David Willey was relegated from his new-ball role for the first time since his ODI debut, 64 matches and eight years ago.

It took a moment of magic from England's go-to man Adil Rashid to break the partnership. Introduced straight after the end of the fielding restrictions, the first delivery of his spell was a tossed-up, drifting legbreak, that dipped just back of a length before biting into the off stump, via a thin deflection off the back pad as Young was turned inside-out.

That moment gave England a toe-hold, but New Zealand had no reason to change their approach. Henry Nicholls, in theory a placeholder for the injured Kane Williamson at No. 3 but keen to seize his chance to make the position his own, knuckled down for an even-tempoed 26 from 30 in a second-wicket stand of 56, as he negotiated, first, Joe Root's offbreaks, then an energetic but ineffective maiden ODI spell for the debutant Gus Atkinson, whom he dispatched through backward square and long-off in consecutive overs.

Willey did return to dislodge Nicholls with a long-hop, but by then, England's gameplan had suffered a critical blow. After two brief visits to the dressing-room, Rashid left the field with a wince at the end of the 17th over, with what the ECB later confirmed was cramp. And though he did return to the fray after lengthy treatment, he was not permitted to bowl again until the 37th, by which stage New Zealand's chase was romping along at 203 for 2.

Mitchell, by this stage, had marched his way to a 54-ball fifty - which he had admittedly brought up after cuffing a Livingstone long-hop through the hands of Chris Woakes at short midwicket, but that was about the limit of his false strokes. With two fours and two big sixes already to his name, Mitchell put the hammer down on England's ailing trump card, and the remainder of the chase was torched.

Rashid's first ball back was planted over long-off for six, his second was finessed through backward square for four. The first ball of Rashid's next over was pumped through long-on for four more. Conway then flicked Livingstone to midwicket to bring up his century, whereupon Mitchell took it upon himself to lead the celebrations. His next three balls, all from Rashid, were launched for six, four, six, and after rushing through to his own hundred from 84 balls with a nudge to leg off Livingstone, he completed the smackdown with 18 more runs from his final seven balls.

England were rather bewildered by the end of it all. Way back at the start of the day, it had seemed that the major talking point would surely revolve around their shock inclusion of Harry Brook as an opener in place of Jason Roy, who suffered a back spasm before the start of play.

With Jonny Bairstow also rested in the wake of his shoulder niggle in the fourth T20I, it meant that England's innings was launched not by a reunion of their 2019 old guard, but by a potential harbinger for the 2023 defence. Despite Malan's protestations last week that Brook is "4, 5, 6" so they couldn't possibly be in competition for one spot, there's no time to stand on ceremony with the World Cup defence looming in less than a month's time, and so the England management opted to nip that notion in the bud from the get-go.

The stage might have been set for a comedic run-out … instead the upshot was a measured opening partnership of 80 in exactly 15 overs, and perhaps contrary to any pre-innings presumptions, it was Malan who made most of that running in another pointedly fighting knock, studded with nine cherry-picked fours, the majority blazed through the covers as he capitalised on New Zealand's fuller lengths in the powerplay.

It was an innings that looked even better in hindsight, once England's engine-room had struggled to match his even tempo - most particularly Joe Root, who never looked settled in his torturous knock of 6 from 15 - and after rolling his wrists on a pull through fine leg to bring up a 48-ball fifty, Malan seemed to tap his pad with his bat in an act of self-congratulation, a tacit acknowledgement of the pressure he is currently under.

And yet, the doubters will not have been entirely silenced by his display - least of all the manner in which it ended. With a World Cup in India looming, a vulnerability against spin isn't an ideal Achilles heel. Yet it took just two balls of Rachin Ravindra's introduction for his start to be picked apart, as he planted his front foot on the line of off stump, and might well have been given out lbw had the ball not ricocheted onto his elbow and down onto his stumps.

Nevertheless, in the personal shoot-out stakes, Malan had been quicker on the trigger than his opening partner. Despite a first-ball clip off the pads for four, Brook cut a subdued figure in his first stab as an ODI opener, perhaps unsurprisingly given that this is just his fourth 50-over match of any vintage since before the last World Cup.

He was noticeably starved of the strike for much of the powerplay, 24 balls to 48 at one point, which may or may not have been an act of subtle one-upmanship on his team-mate's part. Nevertheless he struggled to land any telling blows in the course of a 41-ball 25 all told, with just one other boundary - a wristy blap across the line against Kyle Jamieson. And then, just four balls after Malan's departure, Lockie Ferguson bent his back in a blistering mid-innings spell, to find a perfectly directed bouncer that Brook could only fence meekly to the keeper.

And so it was that Root and Stokes, England's multi-format old firm, were reunited at 80 for 2 without either man having faced a ball. They could have been parted before they'd started too, when Stokes fenced his first ball, another fierce lifter, inches over the head of the sprawling Glenn Phillips at gully. Unlike Root, Stokes recovered his poise to dig England towards what ought to have been a defendable total. After their crushing finish to last week's T20Is, however, New Zealand's batters proved once again that they are on one hell of a roll.