Notes from the first two days at Lord's
Daryl Mitchell's knock, Will Young as opener, Young English problems, Parkinson's pace and a scouting report on Matty Potts.
Daryl Mitchell and the conditions
This was a fantastic innings from Mitchell. New Zealand were an inch from losing this game for the second time when he came in, and with Conway's unfortunate leg-side strangle, could have died completely in this match.
Mitchell was 17 from 47 balls at drinks in the middle of the day. New Zealand were 64/4 after 29 overs. Their lead was nothing, the specialist batters were gone, and Tom Blundell was with him. I think the easy option would have been for Mitchell to keep dead batting the ball. No one would have blamed him for the loss; twice his top order had asked more from him than they should have.
The damage had already been done.
But he decided to attack. On this pitch where being aggressive was a death sentence. After a day and a half it was like the wicket was haunted, coughing up 24 wickets. But three balls after drinks, he was hooking Ben Stokes with two men out and beating them. It was an incredible shot. Not sure anyone else looked as in control all match.
He decided to attack Anderson the following over and was lucky to survive. Stokes saw Mitchell making a player in the following one and pushed hard with the ball in the over after, and Mitchell punched two bad balls with boundaries.
Mitchell Scored 21 runs in 15 balls in this period.
In a typical match, this would not be a big thing. But in this game, that's like landing a submarine on the outfield.
So why did Mitchell make that decision. He saw what everyone did yesterday, and knew that the pitch was flattening out after lunch. From there one in, the rest of his innings was pretty easy, just knocking the ball around, surviving the odd good Anderson ball, and making sure he didn't get caught pulling Stokes' short ball plan to mid-on (which did almost happen twice.
But this was four different innings. When the new ball was helping England and New Zealand were losing wickets, that tough grind after lunch as he edged to 17, the short explosion I just mentioned and the accumulator then followed.
It would be easy to suggest that the pitch, bowlers and ball just flattened out, and perhaps for Blundell's innings that was slightly more true. But I think you need to look at all of Mitchell's work to understand. That he scored big on a pitch that no one else could was partly because of how conditions change. But it was more to do with the fact he survived the tough time and then altered how England saw the game with his counterattack.
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