A Test match for the kids

"Daddy," said my six-year-old son as day three of the Lord's Test drew to a close with Alastair Cook and Ian Bell negotiating the New Zealand attack with a mixture of skill, defiance and luck. "It doesn't look like much fun, batting for England."

"Daddy," said my eight-year-old daughter as day four rampaged through its evening session. "Stokes is my favourite cricketer in the world."

"Yes, please," said my son and my daughter, when I asked - as neutrally as I could possibly manage - whether they would like to go to Lord's on Monday as well. My heart almost exploded with parental pride. I did not care if they were humouring me, or if they had been briefed and/or bribed by Mrs Z; the fact that my children expressed an active urge to go to watch Test cricket was the unquestioned high-water mark of my parenting career, and is likely to remain so, even if they go on to become Nobel Prize-winning physicists, or run a Michelin-starred kebab van, or discover an explanation for the selection of Darren Pattinson for the 2008 Headingley Test.

"Yyyyeeeeessssss," squawked both son and daughter as the Mound Stand erupted to Moeen Ali's brilliant/flukey match-clinching catch at the raucous conclusion of day five.

As introductions to the wonders of Test match cricket go, this was about as good as I could have hoped for. I had taken my children to Test matches a couple of times before, but not since they have been of an age to take much active interest in what was going on. They both were present for the morning session as England incompetently attempted to avert defeat against South Africa on the fifth day at The Oval in 2012, but wisely paid little attention. I had also taken my daughter, then aged four months, to Lord's for an evening session in 2007. Shivnarine Chanderpaul was batting for West Indies. Baby Zaltzman instantly started crying. She clearly had an eye for classical technique even then. "Actually, little one, if you look at how he hits the ball once he has moved out of his stance, it's not that bad aesthetically." "Waaaaaaaahhhhhhh. Waaaahh. Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

This, then, was their first "proper Test match". Should I explain that things will not always be like this? On my first day of watching Test cricket live (albeit after several years of watching a medically inadvisable quantity of it on television), I saw Derek Pringle and Nick Cook grind it out for a couple of hours each as England tried to avert a humiliating 5-0 demolition against the 1989 Australians, and secure instead a humiliating 4-0 demolition. There were moments of David Gower, and a jaunty half-century by Gladstone Small, but still - two hours of Pringle and two hours of Cook plonked a rhino of strokelessness on the stodgy end of that seesaw of entertainment.

This Lord's Test was full of the gradual shifts of Test match narrative as well as sudden jolts of momentum-changing drama, and was played out at a pace that combined old-school classic patience with 21st-century power-flamboyance. It was adorned by sumptuous batting, coloured by individual subplots, and finished with a riveting team bowling display of skill, craft and determination.

It was another Lord's classic to set alongside last year's Indian victory, a tautly fluctuating masterpiece with a denouement of almost melodramatic English incompetence, and the 2012 defeat to South Africa, when Steven Finn bowled like a champion in the making, Hashim Amla hauled his team towards supremacy, Vernon Philander nibbled England to pieces, and Matt Prior, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann almost blitzed England to victory from beyond the precipice of defeat. This one had the added bonus, from an England perspective, of resulting in (a) victory, (b) a 25,000-strong fifth-day crowd going noisily berserk, and (c) further evidence of a new, charismatic team emerging from the wreckage and rancour of recent defeats. And hopefully, it will have infected two more Zaltzmans with the incurable lifelong benevolent virus of Test cricket. It had not looked much fun batting for England at the close of day three. By the end of day five, Lord's was about as fun as it has even been for England in the past 130-odd years.

The Kiwis played some brilliant cricket in this match, but had the roles been reversed and England lost from the positions in which the New Zealanders established themselves, the commentary boxes, newspapers, Twittersphere and anonymous fury pits of online message boards would have been ablaze with condemnation. Positivity is laudable, and Brendon McCullum's team is great to watch, but his tailenders hurled their wickets away in the first innings when England's bowlers were knackered, Tim Southee and Mark Craig lacked the reliability to sustain pressure with the ball, and their captain gave his bowlers insufficient protection at times when relative consolidation might have been a more productive strategy.

England, despite bottling the chance to set a new world record for leg-byes in New Zealand's first innings, bowled pretty well for a side that was tonked for 500 quickly, recovered from a potentially catastrophic early slump in both innings, and generally took major steps forward. Of course, they have taken several major steps backwards on numerous occasions of late, and may do so again. Consistency has seldom been at the top of their list of attributes in the Test game over recent years. But the components of a team that could regularly challenge the best seem to be coming together - an imposing and potentially devastating middle order, pace and hostility in the seam attack, with the ability to maintain wicket-threatening pressure, and an opener who may once again be able to grind down opponents to leave a platform for the stroke-players later on. Or perhaps they will go to Leeds and go to pieces like they did last year against Sri Lanka. Or like they did in Barbados at the start of this month.

As with most great Test matches (and, indeed, most not particularly great Test matches), this game positively belched out statistics. Often some of the stats are linked by quirky but irrelevant coincidence. Amongst which were the following:

● Moeen Ali was only the sixth England player batting eight or lower to pass 40 in both innings of a Test; only Stuart Broad (v India, Nottingham 2011) and Alan Knott (v Australia, Oval 1972) had done so since Hedley Verity scored 45 and 40 in the Bodyline-erupting Adelaide Test of 1932-33 - when England coincidentally won after losing their fourth wicket with the score at 30 on the first morning, just as they did at Lord's yesterday.

● Since then, England have only once won a Test from a worse four-down score when batting first in a Test - they were 18 for 4, also in Adelaide, in the 1978-79 Ashes, before eventually winning by 205, helped by a career-best 97 by Bob Taylor (who coincidentally scored 101 in the match, batting at eight, just as Moeen Ali did at Lord's).

● Coincidentally, the preceding Test in 1978-79, at the SCG, was the last time England won after batting first in a Test and conceding a lead of more than 100. (The last time they won after overhauling any first-innings deficit of more than 100 was when they beat New Zealand from 179 runs down at Old Trafford in 2008.)

● Coincidentally Bob Taylor, who kept wicket in both of the previous stats, also donned the gloves as an emergency substitute when 45 years old in the 1986 Lord's Test against New Zealand, which coincidentally was the previous occasion on which both coincidental openers were out for nought in a Lord's Test innings (John Wright and Bruce Edgar then, Martin Guptill and Tom Latham this time).

● The most recent occasion on which England dismissed both openers for ducks was in another Test against New Zealand, in Auckland in 1991-92, when Wright and Blair Hartland blobbed out together in the second innings - a match that, coincidentally and by coincidence, was also the last time England won after batting first and losing their first four wickets for fewer than 35 runs.