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England can only hope there are fewer red faces when they get their hands on a red ball, even if the final action of their white-ball year was in the end not as humiliating as had long seemed inevitable. New Zealand stumbled as they approached the end of what appeared to be another procession, losing three wickets for eight runs in 17 balls to shoehorn some drama into the dross, only for Zak Foulkes and Blair Tickner to see the side home with two wickets to spare.
In truth, on a ground known as the Cake Tin, the tourists were again half-baked, with their key batters not so much laying a foundation as undermining one, leaving the team to limp to an underwhelming total and New Zealand, for all that they faltered, a straightforward target.
Having been bowled out for 222 in just 40.2 overs England could not make life as difficult for their opponents as it had been for them, and needed a hefty dose of luck to get back into the contest at all – two of the Kiwi top five were dismissed by accident, when first Jamie Overton and then Brydon Carse inadvertently diverted the ball into the stumps at the non-striker’s end. New Zealand end the series having won all the tosses, all the games and all the key battles.
If any Englishman has improved their standing along the way it is Overton, the all-rounder outscored only by Harry Brook, who produced 135 of his 175 runs in the first game before opting, as a true captain might, to stop embarrassing his teammates. And here he was also England’s cheapest bowler and, along with Sam Curran, their most effective, the pair taking two wickets each.
In all three matches Overton has been involved in England’s largest partnership, with Brook in the first game, Curran in the second and Carse in the last. His 68 here was more, by precisely 10, than England’s top three have scored between them across the entire series. He may not be a nimble man but he is a mighty one, and there was one shot, off Tickner, that deposited the ball 25 rows back in what might generously be called the crowd – the number of people here might have generated a fine atmosphere across town at the picturesque Basin Reserve but had a near-impossible task attempting to do so in a stadium that holds 31,000.
Not that they lacked things to shout about, as once again the Black Caps dominated from start to very near the finish. With the ball swinging and seaming on a drop-in pitch that was installed only on Wednesday England’s batters certainly faced a difficult task against some outstanding early bowling, and their approach was to give themselves the highest possible chance of hitting boundaries at the expense of minimising their chance of survival. In practice they did not achieve either. And so it was that, once again, by the time the Black Caps’ lesser bowlers got their hands on the ball, none of England’s better batters were around to benefit.
Jamie Smith finished the series with an average of 6, Ben Duckett with 3.66 and Joe Root, blameless here after being trapped lbw by a beauty from Foulkes, 9.66. Jacob Bethell averaged 10.33, and of those four only Root has ever had a worse series. Optimistic England fans hoping these players might be able to take the attack to an Australia team missing, at least for the first Ashes Test, probably their best bowler will not be encouraged by their record against a New Zealand team shorn of perhaps the finest five of theirs, with Matt Henry ruled out of two of the three games and Will O’Rourke, Lockie Ferguson, Kyle Jamieson and Adam Milne, for various reasons, missing them all.
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New Zealand’s task with the bat felt easy, and Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra made it look that way in scoring 78 for the first wicket. But after the former was run out by Overton, Ravindra and Will Young both followed in short order to bring out English nemesis Daryl Mitchell. The 34-year-old had seen his side home in both of the first two games and looked set to do it again as he eased to 44, and his team to within 27 of their target, before becoming the last of the trio of late-innings wickets to fall.
For the first time since the coin fell the wrong way at the first game in Mount Maunganui England found themselves dealing, fleetingly, with feelings of hope. Fittingly it was Foulkes, whose dismissal of Smith in the second over first turned the game New Zealand’s way, who struck the runs that ended them, and the match.
