Frightened England forget themselves

The pitch at Hamilton's Seddon Park may have been a lifeless beast, but to England's taildiving batsmen on the last day it must have appeared a mirror. Dead, blind to seam and spin, producing a performance not favouring England. Stephen Fleming referred to the "porridge" on the pitch; stuff England must feel like they are currently wading through, with a fair sprinkling of cement powder to boot. The final innings scenario, a target of 300 in just over 80 overs which emerged miraculously from a stodgy first three days, presented England with the chance to make a statement of positive intention. After all, no-one remembers that England's 3-0 victory against the same opposition back in 2004 came by means of two tricky 280+ run-chases; they just remember that England won every Test that summer. But if England had imagined a tense afternoon duel with New Zealand's pair of finger spinners their aspirations proved to be delusions of grandeur. By the twelfth over, when Keven Pietersen raised the drawbridge to Kyle Mills, the game was up, the facade wiped clean away.

England never had as good a batsman as Pietersen in the period before the 2005 Ashes; all of England's current top 6 can boast averages in excess of 40, which only half of the old brigade could. But that team had something infinitely more precious: the knowledge of how and when a Test match is won, the self-belief to turn the game their way at those key junctures and ultimately the luck and good fortune which invariably falls the way of a team which is winning and knows they will again. That sort of ethic and confidence allowed them to stay competitive, and win games from behind such as Johannesburg in early 2005, where Marcus Trescothick battered South Africa and Matthew Hoggard rolled them all within one day to win a game and seal a series from nowhere.

There were strange echoes in England's performance of past epochs - Matthew's Hoggard's stupendous boundary catch to put the skids under New Zealand's second innings brought back memories of a similar effort by Darren Gough at Lord's in 2000 which began West Indies' slide to 54 all out. England's slow crawl with the bat, roundly criticised, started to look a bit like the Atherton-led effort at Karachi in the winter of 2000-1, increasingly as England knocked over New Zealand to give themselves what looked a fighting chance. West Indies and Pakistan in 2000: two early series victories now regarded as important stages in the road which culminated in the Ashes being regained in 2005. There was a sense of this England team striving for their own definitive moment, the moment they stop being a shadow of 2005 England and start being their own team. Yet when an opportunity stared them in the face they wilted; clearly this is a team not ready to emerge from the shadows. And when the opposition are New Zealand, who play so little Test cricket and are a nascent outfit themselves, that is a dolorous state of affairs indeed.

New Zealand, to give them their due, fully deserved what should be a series defining victory. As ever with the bat, their bottom half proved more resilient than the top: England shaded the opening day, but from 6 wickets down 200 more runs were added, which says plenty about both teams. And while England's go-slow was in part of their own volition, the run rate would not have scraped along at 2-per-over had New Zealand not tied them down with tight lines and sharp ground-fielding. Stephen Fleming was the only batsman to achieve anything on note in the second innings of either team, his 66 filled with the beautifully timed pushes, racing to the boundary with little apparent effort, that his team and Test cricket will miss when he retires at the end of the series. To bowl a team out for 110 in 55 overs was some achievement as well, and Kyle Mills earned each of his opening four wickets, a burst which consigned England to defeat.

If any positives are to be gleaned from England's performance they are the catching, excellent after woeful efforts in Sri Lanka, and the 10-wicket haul of Ryan Sidebottom, benefiting from the improved fielding where before he had been denied. Rightly, even England have been too shame-faced to allude to them. But as Sidebottom scythed through New Zealand second time around, the shadow cast by the conspicuously and consistently absent Steve Harmison loomed large. The days where he was trusted to waste the new ball are long gone, while Michael Vaughan's decision to call on Paul Collingwood before Harmison was probably the signal that he has finally exhausted the supply of goodwill which has alone sustained his position for over a year now. Even if his bowling in Sri Lanka showed signs of a resurgence it was a wasted effort; as ever with Harmison the residual benefit was nil. His speed was down, his threat negligible, even taking into account the pitch. If there is any chance of salvaging his international career it will come by England stepping away from Harmison and forcing him to present his case like any other bowler. The current state of affairs is helping neither the bowler nor the team and although Stuart Broad is possibly a season away from being truly ready for Test cricket, England will get more from him than Harmison is currently able to provide.

With the series another of the ludicrous affairs consisting of three Tests back-to-back, England do not have time to consolidate or ponder their position at length. For the third successive series they go behind with only limited opportunity to recover and this is by far the most humiliating situation, in a series they were expected to walk. From here it goes one of two ways, either jolting them into action and a new level of performance or merely facilitating a continual demise. New Zealand, needless to say, will be up for the latter, and are bound to come hard at England with the confidence that such an emphatic win gives them. England need to find a way of brooking the tide; at the moment they seem to be hanging back, waiting for one to commit himself and set the tone. One batsman needs to be bold and take the fight to New Zealand, who are efficient and committed with the ball, but not special. That indicates Vaughan and Pietersen, England's most dominating batsmen. If one of them goes big, it should inspire confidence throughout the team. Currently, England seem to be so afraid of losing games that they have forgotten it requires confidence to win them. And until they realise that a team with defeat foremost in its mind can never succeed, the current trend will continue unabated.