Volatile Test enthralls and mystifies

After an inspirational Test at Lord's has come the volatility of Headingley. A Test series that was imagined as a modest aperitif ahead of the Ashes series has variously enthralled and mystified. After seven wonderful sessions, New Zealand and England both had 350 on the board. You might as well have blown a dandelion to predict the outcome. Do New Zealand have to leave so soon?

"Do you like this new-fangled Test cricket?" asked a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire observer with a strong sense of tradition. He sounded a little bemused, unsure if he welcomed the gifts bestowed upon him. On TV, there were times when the adverts had more of a sense of reality than the cricket. It is heady, dangerous stuff, is fun.

Everything at Headingley has combined for the giddiest of Tests. Another good pitch encourages strokeplay just as the rumpled blanket of cloud overhead insists it is a risky business. England's lower middle order is awash with attacking potential, but still vulnerable with it.

New Zealand must make do with a four-strong attack, but two of them, Tim Southee and Trent Boult, can be devastating with a new ball in their hands. And tail-end batsmen, spared express pace or high-class spin, have twice slogged to good effect, losing themselves in the belief that they are briefly indestructible. Even Kane Williamson is getting out badly and he is better equipped than most to cope.

Even without Brendon McCullum, New Zealand's captain, forever cranking up the mood for attacking cricket, a representation of the belief that Twenty20 cricket has fostered a new appetite for attacking cricket, this Test was always likely to risk ahead at a frantic rate. Periods of stalemate are now measured in minutes where they were once measured in days. Test scoring rates are still creeping up. The Test is in a spin; turn around, pad up and begin again.

Trying to draw conclusions for the Ashes series from such an exuberant Test is largely pointless, but England's loss of six wickets for 29 to the first 14 overs of the second new ball - the first eight delivered under floodlights on the second evening, the next six sent down on Sunday morning - does not auger well. After Southee and Boult, excellent practitioners both, come Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc, both with additional pace on their side.

There was an intriguing chat on Test Match Special between Michael Vaughan and Vic Marks ahead of play in which Vaughan expanded on his faith that, as part of the brave new world, batting orders should become more flexible.

Vaughan's philosophy was an attacking one. Once England's opening stand of 177 had ended, why not take advantage of 21 remaining overs with the old ball by promoting players of attacking intent? If England had broken the hold of Mark Craig, an offspinner who had bowled poorly at Lord's, then New Zealand's four-strong attack would have been compromised. Instead, England did it by the book, preferring conservatism and an attempt to build a sizeable first-innings lead.

That policy failed because Gary Ballance ran out Adam Lyth and then Boult and Southee, with energy reserves unspent, proved irresistible with the second new ball under Headingley's new floodlights which are designed in Yorkshire's White Rose emblem, but considering how cranky conditions are likely to be for batting whenever they are turned on might have been better cast as skull and crossbones.

Ballance's reliance on crouching back-foot play has given him a productive start to his Test career, but he looks a crabby version of his former self as bowlers, as they tend to do, have formulated a response. When Boult comprehensively bowled him with a length ball that straightened, it was easy to imagine Starc, in particular, finding the length to repeat the trick. But as ESPNcricinfo's HawkEye tool showed, he was defeated by low bounce.

Joe Root, the new darling of the Yorkshire crowds, got a going over. His arrival came with the second new ball only three balls old and Boult gave him a torrid welcome: the first ball jammed into the splice and fell wide of short leg; the second snaked past an outside edge; the third, swinging back in, was jabbed uneasily into the offside for a single. Three balls into Southee's next over, he was gone, a regulation catch to the keeper. Perhaps no opening attack in the world grows so much when bowling with new ball rather than old. Headingley's mood swing was so abrupt, lorry loads of Prozac should have been delivered to the groundsman's hut.

If flexible batting orders should be the order of the day for attacking reasons the case can also be made for defensive reasons. For all the brilliance of his batting at Lord's, nobody should pretend that Ben Stokes coming in against the second new ball is a perfect scenario. Far better to promote Moeen Ali, a batsman with experience at the top of the order, to maximise the chances of combating the new ball.

As it was, no England batsman had an answer. On the third morning, Ian Bell continued a largely meek run of form since his glorious last Ashes series in England two years ago - 866 runs at 30.9 is no average for a batsman held to be at the peak of his career - and Southee's morning's work, three for 20 in six, gave him four for 27 in 10 overs of impeccable attacking length, a sequence interrupted by a good night's sleep, or at least as good a night's sleep as you can get in a Leeds city centre hotel on a Saturday night. But then in this Test there is no time to sleep, merely time to gape and wonder, and occasionally see something that you recognise as the five-day game in its traditional form.