Notes from the Oval #2

Um, so now you pull out a day like that... PLUS: Life left in the Fab Four and what exactly is a safe target?

Mitchell Santner on the up. Getty Images

NZ 347 (Latham 63, Santner 76; Potts 4-90, Atkinson 3-66) & 136 for 3 (Young 60, Williamson 50*); England 143 (Henry 4-48, O’Rourke 3-33, Santner 3-7).

Three things from an unforeseen Hamilton happening.

1. Where have you been Mitchell Santner?

The Hamiltonian might look like a second-year accountancy major, but he’s only a couple of months shy of 33. Is it tempting fate to say he might have finally arrived as a test cricketer?

This is Santner’s 30th test. Most, but not all, of the first 28 were pretty average. The last two have been absolute crackers.

In Pune, way back in those heady October days, he found conditions tailor-made for his left-arm orthodox delivered with a high action. Seddon Park bears little resemblance to the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, yet Santner has found a way to have a profound influence on this test, first with the bat and then, just as surprisingly given the reluctance of both skippers to turn to spin, with the ball.

He’s a frustrating batter to watch. In the space of two balls he can go from looking like David Gower at his peak to what David Gower would look like now if he put the pads on and took strike. Santner loves hitting on the up through the off side but is not as good at it as he should be given the amount of times he essays shots in that direction.

His 76 was a tale of two days. He might have scored most of his runs in punchy fashion late on day one, but it was what he added this morning that had more of an effect on the game. He put overs into England’s legs, frustrated them in 44-run partnership with the square-shouldered Will O’Rourke and generally showed the type of fight we’ve been crying out for in tests one and two.

In a short and wildly successful spell with the ball, none of his three wickets were “bought”. He beat the dangerous Ollie Pope to find the shoulder of his bat, got Ben Stokes to miss by a mile as he tried to hit one to Frankton and took a return catch from Brydon Carse that everyone bar Tom Blundell (and probably Carse) assumed was a squeeze.

More than that, the New Zealand attack looked far better balanced with him in the side. New Zealand has leaned heavily on Matt Henry’s continued excellence and the energy of O’Rourke and Nathan Smith, but what they’ve lacked until Hamilton is a reliable point of difference.

As much as the talk has been about Will Young — whose 60 today was a tasty dessert to complement his first innings appetiser (when what I really wanted was a main course) — being excluded from the first two tests, I maintain that Tom Latham also missed being able to call on a spinner capable of keeping England in check on the wide expanses of the Basin Reserve and Hagley Oval.

If in the future New Zealand decides to persist with the four specialist seamers in home conditions, can the selectors now trust Santner’s batting enough to consider him as a genuine allrounder?

I’m not convinced, but answers on the back of a postcard.