Eng v NZ: Two's company

After five months of close combat at both ends of the earth, England and New Zealand have confirmed what the formbook had told us before we started: England are better at Tests and worse at fifty-over cricket than New Zealand are.

Overall, the standard of play in the Tests was pretty low. Far too many batsmen on both sides simply gave their wickets away; several innings were rescued from ignominy by lower order bats shovelling manfully to get out of the hole dug by the alleged specialists. Every Test featured at least one team (and usually both) losing five top order wickets for under 80, more usually under 40.

A couple of those collapses were induced by magnificent bowling - Sidebottom at Wellington and Anderson at Trent Bridge would have demolished most batting line-ups – but most were evidence of inadequate technique or application. On the other hand, they led to matches which swung back and forth with alarming consequences for the blood pressure of partisan supporters. Rarely were the games dull.

But for me, the thrilling stories to come out of the Tests were the emergence of Ross Taylor and Stuart Broad, who started the campaign as rookies and ended as established players.

Taylor is the best batting prospect New Zealand have had since Martin Crowe. We are liable to hear a lot about how he bats in Twenty20 mode, but all that means is that he plays as many outrageously ambitious shots as a Kevin Pietersen or Adam Gilchrist – or, to mention some people who played Test cricket long before anyone had even mooted Twenty20, the three Ws, Viv Richards or Ian Botham.

His 154* at Old Trafford was the innings of the back-to-back series. Granted, he had early assistance from the waywardness of Anderson, but that merely got him off and running. It was an innings of clean hitting, thoroughly demoralising for the bowlers, and it should have won the match.

I found his tour diary interesting, revealing a player very keen on extracting the maximum education from each match. Unless he succumbs to the Kiwi fondness for frequent and bizarre injuries, Taylor will soon be one of the game’s major stars.

What Stuart Broad will become is a lot less certain. He is a decent enough bowler, but he’s impressed me more as a Test batsman. He may yet add a yard of pace and learn to do more with the ball, but he does not pose all that many problems for a Test batsman who is content to work him around. He is learning: you watch him after he’s been hit and he is not cursing his luck or the batsman but pondering how it happened and what he can do to avoid it next time. Even so, as a pure bowler, he does not deserve his place in the side yet.

Having him at number eight, though, means that we have more than filled the hole left by the much-maligned Ashley Giles, the value of whose tenacity while Thorpes or Pietersens completed centuries only became clear once he had gone. In the longer term, I can easily see Broad moving up to seven and then six; his technique is that of a top-order batsman, even if the results are not quite there yet.

Two special cricketers, Broad and Taylor. It’s been fascinating to watch them emerge, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more of them in years to come.