New Zealand v England

             Prior has no such designs on leadership unless called upon as a deputy. His own career has been taken up with making sure his wicketkeeping and batting are polished equally to a high sheen, a task he has performed with dignity and professionalism,You can’t put your team in that position and get away with it too often. But to look at the other side of it, to get ourselves out of that position by batting 170 overs was a monumental feat.” Such mass fumbling probably was not in the tweaks Andy Flower talked about introducing to ensure that England do not start their Test series cold in future. As a devout analyser of the numbers, the team director should be more relaxed here.England’s records in the second Tests of series abroad is pretty good, having won six out of their last 10 and losing just one, against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi just over a year ago.Despite that, they face opponents here who have stopped their own rot, the draw in Dunedin only the second Test out of their last nine not to end in defeat.As a result, and with Doug Bracewell still recovering from the foot he cut at a party, they, like England, will probably remain unchanged, though they do have the option of playing Ian Butler, should they require a fresh pair of legs in their pace attack after 170 overs in the field.
           His experience of captaincy, in the long form of the game, extends to two first-class matches for Sussex, one against Bangladesh in 2005 that was won, the other against Durham in 2008 that was lost by seven wickets.As wicketkeeper, he is well placed to angles that Cook might otherwise miss and he can tell, by how hard the ball is hitting his gloves, whether a bowler is on or off colour.His canny eye might even be able to tell whether a fielder is injured, though he would not have needed any experience to know which part of Kevin Pietersen was sore on Tuesday, the player wearing a bandage with a huge black taped X marking the spot on his right knee.
He is essentially the team’s senior pro but now with added brocade to his uniform. It means his comments, always considered due to his experience, carry that bit more weight, which is just as well given how badly they were needed after England’s poor showing in the first half of the opening Test in Dunedin before their great escape in the second.I think we gained a huge amount of momentum,” said Prior. “But that first innings was the worst I’ve ever been involved in. It was horrendous and we were all honest and big enough to put our hands up and say we can’t keep on playing like that. You have to earn the right to score runs and that’s a good lesson to take going into the rest of this series and the future.