I went to the whole match and enjoyed it a lot. New Zealand were ahead for the whole game until the morning of day four, when their bowlers simply disntegrated. Rather like what happened to England's bowlers on the morning of day four at Headingley last year, with similar consequences.
It was a pretty typical Headingley pitch. No more than decent on day one, getting worse throughout.
And I *love* watching Tests at Headingley (this was my 17th). I've seen great games of cricket, tussles in which the advantage swings from side to side and it tends to take a great performance to win the game. I saw Gooch's 154*, Butcher's 173*, Vengsarkar's 61 & 102*, Dravid's 148, Kirsten's 131 - all of them innings played in severe conditions and mostly against fine bowling - and I treasure those memories of truly great innings, which you could *never* see at Adelaide or St John's. Sure, I've seen England sides torn to pieces by good bowlers on terror tracks - but I've never seen it done by a bad bowler, either for or against England. You have to be *good* to succeed at Headingley.
I'd hate it if *every* Test was a Headingley Test, but I think it's fantastic that one Test in a series favours the bowlers instead of the pampered batsmen. And time and again, Headingley proves that it's not enough to have a poor pitch - you have to have the bowlers who can and will exploit it. The margin for bowler error at Headingley is small - if the bowlers don't concentrate and bowl accurate line and length, they *will* get carted on one of the fastest outfields around (since it's downhill in just about every direction except straight towards the Kirkstall Lane end).
But without Headingley, without Galle, without a classic Indian dustbowl (for some reason I have almost no idea about the individual characteristics of particular Indian grounds), without Sabina Park, without the SCG, without the WACA, Test cricket would be so much poorer.
So, stop whingeing about the damn pitch.
To turn to the actual play, the difference between the NZ and England first innings was mostly which error the bowlers made consistently. They had to get the length exactly right, and that length was a fairly full one. England's bowlers were afraid of overpitching and kept dropping short, and New Zealand's batsmen largely preferred to leave. NZ's bowlers went the other way, overpitching a lot and allowing England's batsmen to drive. You only have to look at where the teams scored their runs, NZ 70% behind square compared to England's 60% in front.
Saggers was the exception in England's first innings, possibly because he was uncontaminated by the WI experience, in which regularly dropping short was effective because WI batsmen were prepared to take the short ball on, but pretty much useless against leavers. But Saggers is not a world-class bowler. He's a good bowler who deserves to be on the fringes of a Test side, and is a much better answer to the question "Who shall we pick when our best bowlers are injured?" than, say, Kabir Ali or, by all accounts, Kyle Mills.
The conventional wisdom on Hoggard is that he's great when it swings but is otherwise innocuous. I've certainly expressed that opinion before, but I've changed my mind. Hoggard is innocuous until he takes a wicket, after which his confidence soars, he gains a yard of pace, and he runs in with real aggression. The correlation with when the ball swings is that since he tends to swing it naturally, it is much more likely that he will take the necessary wicket early on and be a power in the land for the rest of the innings.
Papps and Fleming played very well together in the circs. Reading through the earlier posts, I spotted the odd comment to the effect that Papps is the worst batsman some people have ever seen, which seems to me to be on a par with the comments to the effect that Harmison was the worst fast bowler someone had ever seen. Papps to me looks like a pretty rough diamond as yet, but there's quite a bit to work with there.
But the NZ batsman I'm seriously impressed with is McCullum. He looks to me to be a number six - he's done well at three as an injury sub, but I think his style is more suited to the lower middle order. However, I'm not at all impressed with his wicketkeeping, since it's even worse than Jones's. (Can anyone remember another Test series where both alleged wicketkeepers were so stunningly bad?)
Tresco's hundred was the best innings I've seen him play. It provides no evidence about how he can cope with 88mph+ bowlers, which have consistently given him troubles for two years now, and it's certainly possible to deduce that since he's a weak attack bully and he bullied New Zealand's, New Zealand have a weak attack. But. He didn't, as far as I can remember, chase wide balls outside off with his arms outstretched. He drove straight, and his extra cover drives went to extra cover's right instead of left, which shows that he was getting his head over the shot. In other words, it was the most technically sound innings I've seen from him in ages. I'm still suspicious about what he might do against real pace, but I'm a lot less unhappy with him than I was.
If Flintoff reckons that he never felt comfortable at the crease, felt out of form and was really having to scrap for his runs....
Jones's hundred has entirely convinced me about his batting skills. I'm still not convinced about his keeping, although Headingley is a horrible pitch to keep on and it's possible that having unveiled his batting he will be more relaxed behind the stumps. We'll see.
The field set for Harmison and Hoggard at the end of day four is one I've never seen before: four slips, spinner's gully, silly mid-off, forward short leg, long leg and a fly slip (deep first slip for Hoggard, deep third slip for Harmison). That, and the way in which Vaughan seemed to take an interest in his bowlers and what they wanted to do rather than dictate a la Hussain, made me feel that Vaughan's captaincy is maturing nicely.
I'm beginning to feel quite sorry for the Harmosceptics. All they have left to hang their disapproval of him on is his apparent inability to bowl a good first over of a day or innings. The second and third spell will begin fine, but his first over of the day is usually horrifically bad. But there isn't anything else left.
I'm amused to find that Stephen Fleming has joined the ranks of idiots who compare him to McGrath. Asked if Harmison could be England's McGrath, he replied, "I wouldn't hold him back to a Glenn McGrath role. I'm not demeaning Glenn, but Harmison is a more dynamic bowler. He has a #2 ranking in the world and had the natural attributes to expose the inconsistent bounce more than any other bowler." Fleming is obviously another ignoramus, since he can only base his opinions on facing the two bowlers in Test matches, whereas the experts on this board have the advantage of being able to go strictly by reputations.
Just a bunch of random thoughts after five enjoyable days.
Cheers,
Mike
Oops.
). 
