It was the most amazing session of 20.4 overs. Yet England’s pitiful total of 58 was entirely explicable because they batted with flabbergasting feebleness and the naivety of schoolboys without a coach - in broad daylight too, not at the bewitching hour of twilight when pink balls are believed to assume a life of their own.
The pink ball swung all right in the first day/night Test in New Zealand, but it was nothing exceptional by the standards of swing bowling through the ages. What was wrong was England’s response, which left their faces the same colour as the ball with which Trent Boult reduced them to 27 for nine. England were...