England eye series win before attention turns to Ashes

LONDON (Reuters): Buoyed by Stuart Broad’s match-winning burst at Lord’s, England will look to seal a series win over New Zealand in the second and final test starting at Headingley on Friday, before turning their attention to Australia in July.

Broad’s seven-wicket haul in the second innings of the first test bowled England to a 170-run victory as New Zealand were skittled for just 68, having matched the hosts for three days on a slow and difficult batting pitch.

Conditions at Headingley should be more favourable to run-scoring if the sun is shining, but can be equally unpredictable and favour seam and swing with Broad, James Anderson and New Zealand’s Tim Southee, fresh from his 10-wicket haul at Lord’s, ready to exploit any cloud cover. England named an unchanged squad with batsman Ian Bell having recovered from a bout of tonsillitis.

Foremost in Captain Alastair Cook and Coach Andy Flower’s mind will be deciding whether to keep faith with inconsistent Paceman Steven Finn or bring in fit-again Tim Bresnan on his home ground. Finn, despite taking four wickets in the first innings at Lord’s, bowled too short and minutes after England had completed victory was back out practising on an adjacent pitch.

“He probably isn’t bowling as well as he could, but he’s getting wickets,” England bowling Coach David Saker said. Bresnan, who underwent elbow surgery in February, has not played a test since December last year, but his inclusion would strengthen England’s lower order. England have not won a test at Headingley since beating West Indies in May, 2007. Since then they have lost to and drawn with South Africa, and were beaten in Leeds by the Australians in 2009.

New Zealand will be without wicketkeeper BJ Watling who has failed to recover from a knee injury sustained in the first test. Captain Brendon McCullum will take over behind the stumps with Martin Guptill coming into the side to bat at six. Former captain Daniel Vettori is in line to play his first test for 10 months, subject to a fitness assessment, after spinner Bruce Martin was ruled out of the rest of the tour with a calf injury.

Vettori, New Zealand’s second-highest wicket taker with 360 wickets, has been struggling with a long-term Achilles injury and was originally included in the one-day squad but not in the test side. New Zealand Coach Mike Hesson was left to reflect on a ‘missed opportunity’ at Lord’s in a match that was decided, he said, by an ‘hour of madness’.

“Now that we’ve had some time to reflect, it’s crucial, we focus on what went well for all but an hour of that match,” he wrote on his tour blog. “For me it was the missed opportunity element that hurt the most. For 3-1/2 tests against the second best team in the world we had competed. At times at Lord’s it felt like we were even dictating terms.”

Hesson said the Blackcaps were ‘too timid with the bat’ and his message to his side for Headingley was a simple one. “We need to be sharper and more decisive as a batting group,” he said.

Teams:

England—Alastair Cook (Captain), Nick Compton, Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Matt Prior, Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan, Graeme Swann, Steven Finn and James Anderson.

New Zealand—Peter Fulton, Hamish Rutherford, Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor, Dean Brownlie, Martin Guptil, Brendon McCullum (Captain), Daniel Vettori, Tim Southee, Doug Bracewell, Neil Wagner and Trent Boult.