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Match facts

Friday, March 22, Eden Park, Auckland
Start time 1030 (2130 GMT previous day)Jonny Bairstow is in line for a recall to England’s middle order•Getty Images

Big Picture

There is a Test series up for grabs in New Zealand, but England’s thoughts are never far away from the important summer that lies in wait. Their hosting of the Champions Trophy offers them a chance to break their duck in a 50-over ICC tournament and then there is the little matter of back-to-back Ashes series. There is no point pretending otherwise – it is on everybody’s mind.Three back-to-back Tests in New Zealand are bound to leave England a little queasy. Every time James Anderson frowned in his run up in the second Test in Wellington, awful visions appeared of him missing an entire summer with an as yet undiagnosed injury. But Anderson came through 37 grueling overs, largely into the wind, with nothing more than a few back and heel niggles and with the help of the rain that washed out the final day confirmed that he felt okay again. He is only five wickets short of 300 but the slightest concern about his fitness would tempt England to play safe and rest their most prized bowling asset; Graham Onions was one of only three players who had optional nets on Tuesday.And what of Monty? He was outbowled by Bruce Martin at the Basin Reserve and before this series few people in England had even heard of Bruce Martin. As Graeme Swann’s sidekick in India, Panesar shared in one of the finest spin-bowling feats in England’s Test history. As a lone spinner in New Zealand, his ability to block up an end allowed England to rotate their fast bowlers (and, no mean feat, probably helped to keep them fit in the process).Accusations that New Zealand have been intent solely on a nil-all draw are somewhat unfair. If the pitch in Dunedin was a drudge, Wellington provided a decent Test surface. New Zealand have been competitive, not remotely the pushovers that some imagined as they have battled back from the mess of the Ross Taylor ousting; they can take pride in that. Indeed, their professionalism has been so exemplary it invites the New Zealand public to consider whether the replacement of Taylor with Brendon McCullum was actually more logical than it has so far cared to admit.

Form guide

New Zealand DDLLW
England DDDWW

Players to watch …

Brendon McCullum has led from the front for New Zealand throughout this tour. His counter-attacking half-century in Wellington (are his innings ever anything else?) was his fifth in consecutive innings. However, his form is too good for him not to convert into a hundred. If the surface at Eden Park does have more pace and bounce as suggested McCullum is one of the New Zealand batsmen best equipped to deal with it. Beating England after all that has happened – what an achievement that would be.Jonny Bairstow has played one first-class innings in seven months and now England have confirmed he will be pitched into a deciding Test. No surprise, then, that while most of the squad had a day off on Wednesday he was working in the nets with Graham Gooch. It has been a difficult for months for Bairstow – form and family issues impacted his tours – but this is a chance, albeit an unexpected one, to play a key role for England.

Team news

Kevin Pietersen will not only miss the final Test in Auckland but the whole of the IPL because of a knee injury which has been ruled out of all cricket for up to eight weeks. Instead of the adulation which he laps up on every visit to India, he faces a lengthy rehabilitation with a view to regaining match fitness in time for the Champions Trophy and the Ashes series which follows. Bairstow will deputise. For New Zealand, a third Test in quick succession will tempt them to shuffle their pace attack with the possibility that Doug Bracewell may get an outing instead of Trent Boult.New Zealand (probable): 1 Peter Fulton, 2 Hamish Rutherford, 3 Kane Williamson, 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Dean Brownlie, 6 Brendon McCullum, 7 BJ Watling, 8 Doug Bracewell, 9 Tim Southee, 10 Bruce Martin, 11 Neil WagnerEngland (probable): 1 Alastair Cook (capt), 2 Nick Compton, 3 Jonathan Trott, 4 Ian Bell, 5 Jonny Bairstow, 6 Joe Root, 7 Matt Prior (wk), 8 Stuart Broad, 9 Steven Finn, 10 James Anderson, 11 Monty Panesar.

Pitch and conditions

Drop-in Test pitches are regarded with such suspicion – somewhere between an artificial surface and the real thing – that discussing their likely behaviour still seems a little unreal. A couple of days to help the seamers before the pitch flattens out was one analysis. As for the weather, temperatures at the end of the summer have slipped a tad, but a maximum of 23C and a good deal of sunshine is the forecast.

Stats and trivia

• Eden Park has staged 47 matches since 1930 and many suspect this may be its last. Its straight boundaries fall well short of the 70m minimum distance from the centre of the pitch, but ICC regulations allow any ground approved for international cricket before 2007 cricket to be exempt. So that’s alright then.
• New Zealand have beaten England only once in 15 attempts at Eden Park (10 have been drawn). Daryl Tuffey was the star of their win in 2002 with nine wickets in the match and his 6 for 54 in the first innings was a Test-best analysis.
• England have won deciders on this tour over both 50 and 20 overs.
• England have never won a 50-over ICC trophy; if they tell you they have not even given the Champions Trophy, to be played in England in June, a second thought, greet it with suspicion.

Quotes

“The confidence within the group is building nicely but there’s also a realism that we will have to perform outstandingly well for five days. England stepped up in those previous two deciders and we went missing so this will be a good challenge to see if we’ve progressed as a team.”
“In an ideal world a pitch with more pace and bounce would make for a more exciting wicket. But whichever pitch we get in Auckland we’ll try to find the best way to win the game.”

has turned on Kevin Pietersen, terming him arrogant, self-pitying and isolated, for his part in the furore which destabilised English cricket last summer.There have been more trenchant Notes by the Editor than those which grace the 150th edition of the Almanack, published today, but Lawrence Booth reserves his sternest criticism for Pietersen’s behaviour during England’s Test series defeat against South Africa.

The wisdom of Wisden

– Simon Barnes finds echoes of Don Bradman in Sachin Tendulkar.
– Steve Davies, the Surrey and England wicketkeeper, on coming out as gay in professional sport.”
– Patrick Collins asks why Kevin Pietersen has not become universally revered in English cricket.
– Mike Selvey on his friend and fellow journalist, Christopher Martin-Jenkins.
– Barney Ronay bemoans the retirement of a prolific county runscorer.

“Cricket, some suspected, existed only as an extension of Pietersen’s whims (and unlike team, cricket definitely has an “I” in it). Emboldened by a lucrative new Indian Premier League deal, he was arrogant, attempting to bulldoze over the terms of his central contract. He was self-pitying, claiming he had never been looked after. And he was a man apart, sending silly texts to the South Africans,” Booth writes.Those texts were regarded in much of the media last summer as a national scandal. Perhaps in the use of the term “silly” has stumbled upon a greater truth., condemning the rift as a “mishmash in many genres”, does not spare ECB officials from criticism, concluding: “Only the dressing room knew just how troublesome Pietersen had become; for outsiders to lecture Andy Flower on man-management was plain ludicrous. But as his exile dragged on, the ECB began to look petty, if they showed their faces at all.”Pietersen’s pursuit of Twenty20’s riches at the expense of the Test side – the format which had made his name – was unattractive, although those attitudes can filter down from the top. If there was a have-cake-and-eat-it feel to his simultaneous grouse about excessive cricket and his yearning for IPL, it was hard to ignore a wider truth: a bloated schedule has asked the players to make unfair choices.”The dilemma is not going away, however much English cricket wishes it would.”Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year – an award specific to the English season and winnable only once – are Hashim Amla, Nick Compton, Jacques Kallis, Marlon Samuels and Dale Steyn. The Leading Cricketer in the World award goes to the Australian captain, Michael Clarke.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Michael Hussey scored 95 and the match-winning run-out•BCCI

Dhoni fined

MS Dhoni, the Chennai Super Kings captain, has been fined $20,000 because his team maintained a slow-over rate in the match against Kolkata Knight Riders in Chennai. The Super Kings were found to be two overs behind the over-rate during their successful defence of 200. It was Dhoni’s first such offence this season.

In the searing heat of Chennai, the home side, Chennai Super Kings, soared to the top of the table with a 14-run win over the defending champions, Kolkata Knight Riders. Michael Hussey and the newcomer Wriddhiman Saha stunned the visitors with a 103-run opening stand, Hussey continued hurting them even after the loss of Saha, and the run rate hovered around 10. Hussey missed the century by five runs, but he had set up a daunting task for Knight Riders, who had asked the hosts to bat first.Sunil Narine and Jacques Kallis both registered their second-worst analyses in IPL, going for 35 and 51 respectively. Like in the final of the last IPL at the same venue, Manvinder Bisla scored 92 – he was out on 43 but not given, which kept Knight Riders fighting, but the target was too big, especially with next to little support from the other end.Coming in ahead of M Vijay, who had scored only 122 runs in eight matches at a strike rate of less than a run a ball, Saha, the Bengal wicketkeeper-batsman, was the surprise package. And Hussey, he was just Hussey. He began with a flick off a loose delivery down the leg side, and then hit L Balaji for three consecutive fours – two of them over extra cover, and one edged through slip.Saha then went after his Bengal team-mate Shami Ahmed, taking four, four and six in the fourth over. After Hussey took Narine apart in the fifth over, and Saha did the same to Kallis in the sixth, Super Kings had registered their best Powerplay of this season, 67 for 0. Hussey reached his fifty as early as the eighth over, and despite the oppressive heat he kept converting every one-and-a-half into two.Saha’s wicket came and went, but the run rate refused to go down. Hussey’s wicket came and went – agonisingly short of the milestone and off a long hop – but even that didn’t slow the run rate down. When it did seem to slow down, MS Dhoni got a full toss off the last ball of the innings, and duly took six.Knight Riders got a good start with an extras-ridden opening over by Dirk Nannes, but Chris Morris soon removed Gautam Gambhir. Bisla, struggling at that time, got going with four fours off Morris in the fifth over, but at the other end Brendon McCullum played Mohit Sharma on to make it 63 for 2 after six overs.An ideal period followed for Super Kings as Kallis and Bisla both struggled to hit the boundaries or alternate the strike, and by the time the next boundary was hit, a six off the last ball of the 10th over, the asking rate had reached 11.6.The pressure resulted in mistakes, but in the next two overs Dhoni missed a stumping and the third umpire refused to acknowledge a run-out, a result of a canny deflection from Dhoni. Kallis soon fell to an ungainly ramp, leaving about 13 an over, which would soon cross 15. Bisla and Eoin Morgan gave the target a fair go, bringing it down to 29 off the last two overs, but Hussey once again killed it off with a direct hit from mid-on.

India’s union law minister, Kapil Sibal, is keen on the central government drawing up legislation that makes spot or match-fixing a criminal offence in the country. Sibal has consulted with Jitendra Singh, the sports minister, about the same, and hopes the bill will be finalised and introduced in Parliament at the earliest.”You have to have a separate definition and a separate law, which makes match-fixing or spot-fixing an offence, a criminal offence, and have separate provisions dealing with the punishment and trial. Of course the criminal procedure code will apply,” Sibal told news channel NDTV*. “That law is being contemplated and when broad contours of the law are ready, and this will be done in collaboration with the sports ministry, then sports ministry will carry it to Parliament.”The development comes in wake of the allegations of spot-fixing in the IPL, over which three Rajasthan Royals players – including Test cricketer Sreesanth – were arrested last week. The players were charged under sections 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy), and later section 409 (criminal breach of trust), of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).Sibal said past instances of fixing in India, where attempts to prosecute the perpetrators failed due to lack of legislation dealing solely with the issue, proved it was necessary to work on such a law. “The present provisions of the IPC don’t allow prosecution for match-fixing as it is not an offence,” he told newspaper. “The nearest provision under which a player or someone who indulges in match-fixing or spot-fixing can be booked is Section 420 of the IPC, which deals with cheating or fraud.”However, past experience of using this provision of IPC has not been very good, since many previous attempts to prosecute the accused have failed. That is why it is necessary to come up with a special enactment to deal with this.”Indian cricket has had two other instances of bans being handed out for corruption. Last year five domestic players were banned by the BCCI – for periods ranging between one year and life – for allegedly being involved in match-fixing, and negotiating for extra and illegal pay. Before that, there was the high profile match-fixing saga of 2000, following which former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin was handed a life ban and batsman Ajay Jadeja was banned for five years among others. Jadeja’s ban was overturned by the Delhi High Court in January 2003, the court ruling that there was no proof of his guilt. In November last year, the Andhra Pradesh High Court declared the BCCI’s life ban on Azharuddin to be illegal. The bans were the only penalty meted out to these players, with none of them being prosecuted in a court of law on the fixing charges.* May 20 4.00pm This story has been updated with fresh Kapil Sibal quotes

Flanked by Australia’s physio Alex Kountouris and their doctor Peter Brukner, Michael Clarke walked laps of Trent Bridge while the rest of his team went rather less gingerly through their paces. Officially this is all part of the plan – Clarke also did 20 minutes of shuttle runs and took part in slips practice later – but it provided a reminder that the captain’s back requires constant vigilance ahead of the first Test against England.Ensuring Clarke’s readiness for the challenges to be posed by Jimmy Anderson and company is chief among the tourists’ concerns in Nottingham. So far he has maintained a steady upward trend in mobility and match form since the tour began at Taunton, culminating in a flashy second innings century at Worcester. Clarke is expected to bat at training on Monday, though his training patterns will likely remain modified for the rest of the series.Chris Rogers, the opening batsman, said Clarke was on course to be fine for the first day of the Trent Bridge match, but also empathised with his captain’s back struggles, which are common among top-order batsmen given their requirement to crouch, twist and sway an enormous amount at the crease if they are to be successful run-scorers.”I think he’s pretty good, I haven’t heard anything different, so I expect he’ll be ready to go on Wednesday,” Rogers said after training. “I don’t know whether he’s 100% or not, I think he’s had to manage it. Bad backs, I’ve had mine too, it’s not the nicest thing, so whether he bowls or not I don’t know, but I think he’ll be right with his batting and he showed it the other day.”It’s just not ideal, it becomes a bit restrictive and when you’re facing the likes of Steve Finn, Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson you’re going to be having to move around a fair bit, so hopefully the work he’s done means he’s ready to go.”Apart from their monitoring of Clarke, the other talking points for Australia on their first visit to the ground were the hard, abrasive and dry nature of the practice wickets and the pitch square, and also the fact that the Dukes ball continued to swing noticeably for the impressively rhythmic Mitchell Starc and James Pattinson despite the lack of any apparent overhead help from a pleasingly cloudless sky.”It swings here even today,” Rogers said. “The sun’s out, you expect nice batting conditions when the overheads are good but it swill swung so thats how it’s played traditionally, i expect that to be the case. It’s hard to know what the wicket is going to do, I think it’s going to be pretty good to bat on, but swing is going to be a big threat.”The Test pitch itself was kept under wraps throughout the session, Rogers deducing that the ground staff was eager to retain as much moisture as possible, lest it dry out too early in the prevailing warm weather. “It looked like there were a few cracks in it,” he said. “I think they’re trying to keep some moisture in it definitely. It’s been hot here and I think that’s going to dictate how the pitch plays.”If you look at the wickets next to the pitch they are fairly abrasive already, so everyone realises the ball will scuff up a fair bit. Therefore reverse swing comes into it. Spin is going to have to do a huge role to help out the quicks as well. They have obviously got a trump with Swanny, but Nathan Lyon is bowling pretty well as well. Hopefully we’re in a good position.”