Ben Duckett worked Mitchell Santner into the leg side, set off for a single and roared ‘Yes!’ even before he reached the other end.
A hundred on his home ground, the sun on his back and the stands full, was just the tonic – both for an opener in need of runs and a team hell bent on turning this remarkable third Test on its head.
At stumps on another sweltering day by the Trent, England were 215 behind on 223 for two, with Jacob Bethell – unbeaten on a classy 74 – building on some heroic bowling from Ben Stokes, and New Zealand wondering how on earth they had let a first-day position of 317 without loss metamorphose into a cause for concern.
There remains plenty of work to do on a pitch that, for bowlers at least, has been somewhere between headache and heartbreak. But Duckett’s hundred – his first in 22 Test innings, as well as his first score above 50 in 15 – has given England belief they can leave Nottingham with the series win that seemed theirs for the taking before the Rex Rooms became Chelsea’s most famous nightclub.
The story would have taken a different twist had Henry Nicholls held on to a simple chance at third slip, with Duckett, pushing at Nathan Smith, on eight. Since Emilio Gay had five balls earlier been caught behind down the leg side off Will O’Rourke for a duck, that would have left England eight for two, still 430 adrift.
But Duckett seized his sliding-doors moment with the impish aplomb of old. The next delivery disappeared through the covers, and he was up and away, punching square, pulling with ease, sweeping liberally. Though the thermometer read 36 degrees, he somehow managed to turn up the heat.
Ben Duckett is emotional after reaching his century at Trent Bridge on a fine day for England
Ben Stokes seized the initiative with a brilliant spell of bowling early on the third day
New Zealand’s bowling, it’s true, has enjoyed better days. Matt Henry, top of the Test rankings after his 11 wickets at The Oval, is missing with a calf injury, and Ben Sears playing only his third Test.
Blair Tickner managed just three overs before going off with concussion, having been hit on the head while batting by Jofra Archer, and was replaced by Zak Foulkes, winning only his sixth cap. Santner, meanwhile, was bowling his left-arm spin with the red ball for the time since last August. His eight overs cost 55.
Even so, England were in a hole, the runs had to be scored, and Duckett needed them more than anyone.
Since his match-winning 149 against India at Headingley last summer, his greatest contribution to the headlines had been his drunken night out in Noosa as the Ashes tour unravelled. Now, having foregone an IPL deal with Delhi Capitals to focus on his Test spot, he repaid the faith, moving to his seventh Test hundred from just 88 balls.
Smith got him in the end for 113, inducing a loose drag-on as Duckett opened the face to a ball that cramped him for room, but not before he and Bethell – at last making a first-innings contribution – had put on a thrilling 179 at a run a ball.
Their partnership roused the crowd as much as Stokes’s bowling had before lunch, when England picked up where they had left off the night before. Wickets with the last two balls of Thursday evening had left New Zealand 361 for four, turning a potentially disastrous first day into a merely poor one, but Stokes is rarely better than when he spies a glimmer.
In eight wholehearted overs, he had Daryl Mitchell caught behind on review for 11, nightwatchman O’Rourke miscuing a heave to backward point for a career-best 19, and Santner caught in the gully off his wristband for four as he tried to fend off something short and nasty.
Shoaib Bashir, with his first Test wickets in almost a year, and Archer completed a collapse of 10 for 121, but it was Stokes who had banged down the door in a game that, as much as the Ashes misadventure, may end up defining his captaincy.
The wicket of Santner was his 250th, making him only the second Test all-rounder, after South Africa’s Jacques Kallis, to combine that landmark with 7,000 runs.
Stokes it was, who – at 5.23 on the first evening, with his team facing ridicule – had made England’s first breakthrough. And Stokes it was who set about ensuring New Zealand became only the third Test team to be bowled out after starting with a triple-century opening stand.
He may have spent the last fortnight and more driving the ECB to distraction, adding uncertainty and farce to England’s miserable winter. But he is simultaneously English cricket’s firestarter and its likeliest means of putting the fire out.
There were one or two at Lord’s who had hoped his late-night jaunt to the Rex Rooms might spell the beginning of the end of his England career. Yet the first two days in Nottingham have confirmed that while the Test team at times seem unable to live with him, they most certainly cannot live without him.
