New Zealand won another series overseas quietly and without any fuss. They were helped to a great extent by the incredible hype around the retirement announcement of the England skipper Ben Stokes. That seemed to have not only taken the England cricket loving public, but even the team by surprise as could be seen by the crazy manner in which they went on to play their second innings.

There is a big school of thought in modern cricket that it doesn’t matter if you lose in trying to go for a win. Really? Sure, go for a win, but in cricket if you find that the win is not possible, but a draw can be achieved, then why not go for that option. Here it was not that England were 0-1 down. They were 1-1, so if the third and final Test was drawn then the series would have been shared and not lost. It was not even as if the points that the team got for winning the game would have made a difference to qualifying for the WTC final. So, the approach that was seen was simply mind-boggling, to say the least. Stokes opening the batting and storming down the pitch to the first ball, and then Harry Brook doing Harry Brook things just didn’t make any sense whatsoever.