A roller-coaster spanning over five days has finally ended. Test cricket just witnessed one of its finest advertisements. England were ahead for major part of the Test. NZ started their redemption act on day 4, stuttered on day 5 before pipping England in the final few seconds. Lot of dissection can happen about how things could have panned out. But it is a one-run win for NZ and that means the series has been squared 1-1. England's brand of cricket is winning them games and more importantly winning them new fans. New Zealand managed to just keep them away. But Test cricket seems to have the right way forward with England leading the march. We will walk away as well. This is Kumar Abhisekh signing off on behalf of Abhinand, Anurag, Pradeep and Siva. We had a ball bringing this to you. Pleasure was all ours...
Tim Southee: Right up there. A special win to come back after being asked to follow-on. The guys will soak this up. The character showed by the guys has been very special. Try to stay as calm. Just give it your best shot. Great Test to be involved in. We couldn't read much into the Day-Night Test. England were all class in the first two days. Number of guys to thank. The openers held it together in the second innings. Then Kane and Blundell. Neil has been doing this us for a long period of time. It came off for him at the right time. Great for Test cricket for all the guys that are here. Having Test matches like these is good for Tests going forward.
Ben Stokes: That game is what Test cricket is about, it was just incredible. The emotions we were going through and obviously the Kiwi boys out there as well. Was incredible to be involved in such a Test match. Everyone's got their money worth. It was a case of assessing the situations, we always knew that at some point in that partnership (between himself and Root), Tim was gonna have to roll the dice with something. Wags came on and blew the game open for them. For myself and Joe there, that was our opportunity to pounce. Sometimes things don't happen the way you want them to. With those bouncer plans, we had to make a decision and obviously it didn't come off for us. It was an opportunity for us to score runs there. As soon as Waggie came on to do those bouncers, I saw it as an opportunity to maybe take 20 runs off the over and then bring the game even more in our favour. Credit to Waggie and Tim for coming up with that idea. (On his knee) Better than bad. Disappointing to end with a loss here. We had a great summer last year. We have a few months off before the Ashes. We will look to do what we can.
Kane Williamson, Player of the Match: It isn't quite fair to be standing here after a game of cricket like that. The contributions we've seen from both teams ... fantastic game of cricket to be a part of. For us as a team, we've been fighting away in the Test format for a while, it's kinda nice to get across the line in this one. You always try to do the best you can for the team and it's never enough. We saw some really valuable partnerships to get us a total on the board and something to bowl at in the last innings. We had to fight really hard to reverse some of the momentum. This English team is playing incredible cricket at the moment. We were up against it coming into this game. To fight away, to complete and ultimately just get across the line is a nice feeling. I was just trying to stick to the basics. We knew we were going to be challenged. There is so much quality in this English attack and the pitch offered a little bit throughout. Amazing pitch that set the platform for a fantastic game of cricket. Jimmy smacked it hard (about the last four that Anderson hit), one of those things.
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