Morning everyone and welcome to a Test that has somehow dribbled into a fourth day. We have had a wicket roughly every four overs, but the rain gods have allowed only five sessions of play. England are well on top, yet they could still lose.
Match Situation
They need five more wickets before New Zealand score 199 more runs. So far, between the showers, the New Zealanders have managed only 168 for 15 wickets, so 199 for four may sound like a stretch. But they have got more batting left than you would think because they sent in a nightwatchman, way back on Friday evening.
They have an opener, Devon Conway, who is still there and who made 200 on his Test debut at Lord's. He may only have added 23, 3, 13, 1 and 19 not out at this address since, but that could be taken to mean that he is overdue another big one. And the two men who got most of the runs in New Zealand's first innings, Glenn Phillips and Kyle Jamieson, are still to come. It is as if their captain, Tom Latham, has done by accident what Don Bradman once did deliberately and got the batting order the wrong way up.
Pitch and Bowling
On a pitch that has been dry, uneven and widely derided, England's bowlers have only had to look at the off bail to be lethal. Ollie Robinson, when he switched to the Nursery End yesterday and Jamie Smith stood up to the stumps, promptly took two wickets in two and a half overs. He has seven for 57 in the match, Gus Atkinson four for 25, Josh Tongue four for 55. Only Ben Stokes (none for 22) has been anodyne.
Robinson has never taken eight in a Test, let alone ten, so he will still be hungry today, and the chances are that he, Atkinson and Tongue will finish the job. But a low-scoring match can be won by one fearless knock, as England found in the last first Test they played, when Travis Head beat them at their own game. So you never know.
Play resumes at 11am BST and the forecast, thankfully, is as dry as the pitch.
