As Brydon Carse stood on Hagley Oval’s outfield under an azure sky and basked in the afterglow of his 10-wicket match – one that showed his potential as an overseas safecracker and muscled England to victory in the first Test – the splice-thumping fast bowler was described as having “the heart of a lion”.
Given the words came from Ben Stokes, a man who has a pride of them tattooed on his back, it could be taken as a fair old dollop of praise. Stokes cannot stockpile enough quicks for the challenges ahead and the emergence of Carse, fresh from impressing on the less conducive pitches of Pakistan, is another missile in the silo.
Playing in just his third Test, Carse pushed New Zealand back with the short ball and spitefully hunted front pads in between, ending with match figures of 10 for 106 that shone like the sun overhead. Add the unbeaten 33 he ransacked with the bat – plus the fact that Harry Brook’s 171 contained five slices of fortune – and it was pretty clear why Carse was named player of the match at the end of this eight-wicket win.
“I don’t want to say I knew this day would come,” said Carse, having claimed six for 42 in New Zealand’s second innings of 254 all out. “But I was always ambitious to think I can play cricket at this level. I’m just very proud of today’s performance.”
Hamilton in 2008 was last time an England seamer, Ryan Sidebottom, claimed 10 wickets across two innings in an overseas Test and, 1-0 up with two to play, the current side now have a golden chance to become the first since that tour to claim a series win in New Zealand. Although the hosts will surely not be so generously butter-fingered in Wellington next week, having somehow dropped eight catches here.
Like Stokes, Carse is partial to a spot of ink and on his upper left arm are a series of coordinates. They represent the city of his birth, Gqeberha in South Africa (Port Elizabeth as it was previously known), and the journey travelled to end up with three lions on his chest. It has been a bumpy ride at times, too, both a career-threatening knee injury suffered in late 2021 and this year’s three-month ban for forgetting that professional cricketers are barred from betting on the sport.
The second of those sliding doors moments led to Stokes, his Durham teammate, acting as mentor, having had a few scrapes of his own back in the day. The advice was not to let the error define him as a person and Stokes, now his Test captain, is reaping the benefits. “When those kinds of things come from someone who knows what it’s like to go through certain stuff it means a bit more to the person listening,” said Stokes. “He knows how much value I have in him as a player. I guess it might make him run a little bit harder when it’s me asking him to bowl an extra over.”
Stokes described the strapping Carse as three bowlers in one: able to effect short-ball plans, keep things tight, and also home in on those pads and stumps with nip. All three qualities were on show here and not least on a fourth morning when he pinned Nathan Smith and Matt Henry lbw in the space of five balls and later returned to end Mitchell’s stubborn resistance. The surface had flattened out, Stokes was suffering a stiff back, and no one else looked that threatening.
This was the first time since 2021 that Carse had claimed a five-wicket haul in first-class cricket and just the sixth of his career overall. While personally gratifying, it was also a reminder of England’s increasing belief that Test cricket is a different beast to playing with a Dukes ball in April and that attributes trump county statistics.
After a 40-minute lunch break for England to ponder their approach target of 104 – 39 minutes and 59 seconds of which were probably not required – Zak Crawley followed his first-innings duck by chipping a return catch to Henry for just one. This saw Jacob Bethell saunter out at No 3 and wallop an unbeaten 50 from just 37 balls. There was a bit of master and apprentice after he pulled the final run square, with Joe Root, unbeaten on 24 at the end of his 150th Test, putting an arm round him as they walked off.
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The pressure was off in one sense, with the Hagley Oval pitch too true not to make an England win a formality. But Bethell, a stripling aged 21, displayed the temperament and technique that makes a first-class average of 25 misleading. He hits a pretty long ball too, with the six he smoked square off fellow newcomer Smith late on a beauty. “It was set up for him to express himself,” said Stokes, the tone having already been set in chase by a typically madcap 18-ball 27 from Ben Duckett.
In many ways Stokes was more impressed by Bethell’s 10 in the first innings; a passage of play that saw Henry and Tim Southee probe away with the new ball under leaden skies before New Zealand’s ruinous run of eight dropped catches began. “He played and missed a lot early on,” said Stokes. “But I loved the way he just scratched his mark, walked to square leg and came back to face up again. If he sticks to that attitude and swagger, I’m pretty sure he’s going to be all right.”
Tom Latham, Stokes’ opposite number, had plenty more to ponder and so soon after that monumental 3-0 win in India, be it his side’s slippery fingers, a first-innings 348 that was riddled with soft dismissals, or whether Southee, having announced this series will be his last, has in fact already run out of road.
The New Zealand way is not to panic, however, and the Basin Reserve, scene of next week’s second Test and the ground that witnessed their series-levelling one-run victory over England last year, should be a decent reminder of this.
