Day 2: England 140 & 226 all out (Gay 57; Smith 6-70) lead New Zealand 113 all out (Robinson 5-39) & 36-3 by 217 runs
LORD’S — When Emilio Gay was visualising his England debut in the run-up to this opening Test against New Zealand, he surely wouldn’t have expected a pitch so treacherous that Nasser Hussain was moved to deem it “unplayable”.
By stumps on the second day, and with New Zealand already two down in their chase of 254, the opener’s 57 runs in England’s second innings were already looking like a game-changing intervention.
Hussain, who captained England with distinction on 45 occasions across his 96-Test career, was strident in his criticism of a surface on which 33 wickets have fallen across the first two days at Lord’s.
He also offered an insight pre-match on what Gay must have been going through in the lead-up to this match, with the Durham man’s 552 County Championship Division Two runs no substitute for the experience of taking on a world-class attack at cricket’s most storied venue.
