New Zealand vs England 2022-23

Test matches (2): New Zealand 1, England 1

A series drawn by the rarest of margins was followed by a game of football on the outfield of Wellington's Basin Reserve, the teams smiling in the hazy afterglow of a magical Test. It summed up the friendship on which this tour was built. Everyone felt like a winner, even if it was New Zealand who had taken the honours on a life-affirming final day. Tigerishly defending 258, they had become the second team in 146 years of Test cricket to win by one run, and the fourth to win after following on.

Not that Ben Stokes, England's captain, had any regrets. Instead, looking back on his team's 226-run first-innings lead, he pointed to his attack's previous stranglehold over New Zealand's top order, plus a pitch that was only improving after an emerald start. "They needed to play the perfect game," he said, after Kane Williamson's characterful tide-turning century, Tom Blundell's fine all-round match, and Neil Wagner's lung-busting final say achieved just that, to leave the series 1-1, and deny England their first series win in New Zealand for 15 years.

Stokes's decision to enforce the follow-on had been driven by England's recent desire to play fast cricket. But it also ignored his own chronic knee injury, which reduced his bowling options, and it was legitimate to ask whether New Zealand's route back into the contest and the series would have been offered had either the Ashes, or World Test Championship points, been at stake.

The atmosphere, though, was different. This was a goodwill tour that sat outside the WTC: New Zealand were being repaid for a trip to England in 2021 that helped offset English cricket's pandemic losses. And it was a continuation of the evangelical drive from Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum to entertain, above all else. Back in the country of their birth, where England had drawn so much recent inspiration, this was a homecoming of sorts for Bazball. Not that either man liked the buzzword, spawned when the sides met the previous summer. "English Test cricket" was Stokes's suggested alternative following a commanding 267-run victory in the day/night series opener at Mount Maunganui - a record-equalling tenth win in his 12th Test as captain (including a stand-in role in 2020).

The joyful approach that had underpinned England's cricket was on show the moment they landed in New Zealand, and checked in at the luxurious Millbrook resort on the South Island. Four days of golf, leisure and, for some support staff, extreme sports were more than just a bonding exercise. According to McCullum, creating a memory-laden lifestyle for players was also a broader response to the financial tractor beam of T20 franchise cricket.

After a two-day pink-ball warm-up match in Hamilton - a second was cancelled to allow further time on the fairway - Cyclone Gabrielle drove final preparations into the indoor turf nets at the Bay Oval. The storm skirted Mount Maunganui, but wreaked havoc elsewhere: seamer Blair Tickner gave a tearful account of the flooding of his father's house in Hawke's Bay. He was one of five New Zealand players whose arrival for the First Test was delayed. Fellow fast bowler Matt Henry was among them, though he then stayed at home for the birth of his first child.

Henry's absence, the loss of Kyle Jamieson to a back injury, and the decision not to call on Trent Boult - who had turned down a central contract to become a T20 freelancer - meant Tim Southee led a green attack for his first home Test as captain, having replaced Kane Williamson in December. England's free-scoring batsmen took advantage of this, and the floodlit format, to offer their more experienced seamers prime conditions: on the third evening, Stuart Broad rolled back the years and pinned back the ears during an irresistible surge.

A year earlier, he and James Anderson had been dropped from a Caribbean tour, to shore up the listing captaincy of Joe Root. The pair were subsequently embraced by the live-in-the-moment philosophy of Stokes and McCullum, and augmented by Ollie Robinson's burgeoning skills away from home. And the first of Broad's pink-ball victims that evening - Devon Conway, bowled - saw him and Anderson pass the Test record of wickets in games played together.

Not to be upstaged on what many thought might be their last overseas tour, Anderson claimed four of his own to seal England's first win in an away day/night Test, their sixth in a row, and their first in New Zealand since Napier in 2007-08 - the series in which he and Broad first joined forces. At 40, Anderson also became the oldest to top the Test bowling rankings since 1936, when Australian leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett was 44. "New Zealand is a special country for us," said Broad, while stressing Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne still occupied a higher echelon. "I feel very lucky to have been born in the same era as Jimmy. He's the reason I'm still going at 36."

Broad, though, lamented that the team's resurgence was not being charted in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Amid this latest tranche of praise for Stokes, a more embittered predecessor than Root might have bristled at the implied criticism of his tenure. Instead, between Tests, he joined the chorus, while wondering how he could assist more. Following two dismissals to the reverse scoop at Mount Maunganui, he said he was unsure of his role, but the question was immediately answered in Wellington. An unbeaten 153, his 29th Test century, turned 21 for three into an aggressive first-innings declaration, while New Zealand's final-day triumph hinged on his removal by Wagner for an otherwise chanceless 95.

Harry Brook had no such doubt, turning his golden form in Pakistan into a third straight match award with scores of 89 and 54 in the First Test, then hitting a celestial 186 in the Second. Offered the chance by an injury to Jonny Bairstow, Brook now had 809 runs from his first nine innings - a record start to a Test career. Throw in a £1.3m IPL contract and a T20 World Cup winners' medal, and he had enjoyed his first winter as an international cricketer. His maiden Test wicket on the fourth day at Wellington - Williamson, no less -furthered his ascent. But England's run-chase brought a wet fish around the chops: a calamitous attempt at a single from Root, and a swooping throw from Michael Bracewell at slip, meant Brook was run out without facing.

This was just one sliding-doors moment in a gripping finale that saw New Zealand, though less of a force than when they won the WTC in 2021, stretch their unbeaten home record to 11 series, going back to December 2017. Another such moment was a possible uncalled wide the ball before Wagner removed last man Anderson. When Anderson declined to review a fateful tickle down leg to the diving Blundell, the game enjoyed an old-fashioned conclusion. "Tim [Southee] came up to me and said: 'You owed us one, mate,'" said Anderson - a nod to New Zealand's ill fortune in some memorable recent battles, not least the 2019 World Cup final. When the football came out after the handshakes, and shirts were signed to raise funds for the cyclone relief fund, it felt as if nobody had lost.