BURNS DRAGS ENGLAND OUT OF A HOLE

Opener goes from scapegoat to saviour with century that may avert first Test defeat

BACK in April, Rory Burns — fresh from being dropped in India — bristled at the suggestion he might have to work his way back into the Test team. It was the reaction of a player who hadn’t accepted his fate, a grievance bolstered by the fact that all his team-mates bar Joe Root had struggled too.

Yesterday, as if to confirm that others had been wrong to doubt him, Burns went from scapegoat to saviour — if not seamlessly then gutsily, last man out after making his third Test hundred and taking two blows to the head.

Above all, he had helped England avert meltdown in their first outing of the summer.

At stumps, New Zealand were 62 for two in their second innings, an overall lead of 165. Without Burns’s 132, chiselled out in seven minutes short of eight hours, their advantage might have been decisive.

Root had announced his target on the game’s eve: win all seven home Tests and arrive in Australia this winter with a swagger. It felt ambitious when he said it, and positively delirious when England slipped to 140 for six on the fourth morning, still 238 behind.

The captain himself had fallen first ball of the day for 42, caught low at first slip by Ross Taylor off the hulking Kyle Jamieson. Root was soon followed by Ollie Pope for 22, then Dan Lawrence and debutant James Bracey for ducks — all to the forensic Tim Southee.

At that stage, everything seemed in keeping with a horrible week for English cricket. On Wednesday, their public commitment to tackling various forms of discrimination had been instantly undermined by the discovery of racist and sexist tweets from Ollie Robinson.

Two days later, the ECB were forced to deny claims of institutional racism by former umpires John Holder and Ismail Dawood.

A batting collapse was small fry in the circumstances. Equally, it was doing little to lift the sense of an institution under attack, on and off the field. For a while, the followon loomed; the sun was shining exclusively on New Zealand.

But the mood changed when Burns was joined by Robinson. On the second day, he had shown character with the ball, and now did so with the bat, taking charge of a restorative seventh-wicket stand of 63 with s ome meaty cuts and clumps.

One of Root’s other pre- match requests had been for a lower order capable of runs, and Robinson comfortably filled a No 8 slot that was once home to as good a player as Moeen Ali.

By the time he top-edged a pull to long leg, handing Southee his fifth wicket, he had scored 42. If the ECB ban Robinson from this week’s second Test at Edgbaston, he has at least left his mark on something other than social media.

At the other end, Burns had barely switched on the engine, let alone located the gear stick. By lunch, he had added 13 to his overnight 59. When Robinson fell in the 85th over, Burns had 82. Plain sailing it was not.

He had already survived one chance, on 77, a stumping by BJ Watling off Mitchell Santner’s leftarm spin. Then, on 88, Burns was put down at second slip by Southee off Neil Wagner; Taylor grabbed vainly for the rebound.

And when Stuart Broad was ninth out, with the total 223, Burns had 91. Now, with only Anderson for company, he changed from John Edrich into Garry Sobers, hurrying through the nineties, then taking three fours in an over off Jamieson. Moments later, he slog-swept Wagner towards Old Father Time — his first six in Test cricket.

Lord’s was coming to life. When he nibbled fatally at Southee, the last wicket had added 52.

Like New Zealand opener Devon Conway on Thursday, Burns had come within moments of carrying his bat. Unlike Conway, he was putting a patchy sequence behind him: 78 runs in eight innings against Pakistan and India, plus a missed tour of Sri Lanka because of paternity leave, and that dropping in Ahmedabad. An Ashes trip will seem more tangible after this.

Southee, meanwhile, now possessed his country’s two best analyses at Lord’s, his six for 43 bettering his own six for 50 in 2013. Had the third day not been washed out, his contribution might have been match-winning.

And beautifully though he bowled, he was helped by England’s callow line-up. Zak Crawley had already fallen to a loose drive on the second evening, but Lawrence’s wristy fiddle to third slip was worse — the shot of a man on 100, not nought. The left-handed Bracey then contrived to miss what was little more than a straight ball.

England are, for various reasons, without Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow and Ali. But if this was a chance for their collection of young hopefuls to prove a point, they flunked it en masse. For Lawrence, who had finished the India tour with scores of 46 and 50, it was especially deflating.

Still, by supervising the addition of 135 for the last four wickets, Burns had moved the dial of this Test away from an England defeat and towards a draw. That scenario felt l i kelier as New Zealand’s openers took their time as the shadows lengthened, restricted to defence by the luckless excellence of Anderson and Broad.

But it was Robinson who made the breakthroughs. First he bowled Conway via an inside edge for 23. Then, the ball after Kane Williamson was spared an lbw decision by a faintest edge, Robinson found the technology more to his liking.

Richard Kettleborough’s not-out decision looked fair enough, and Root’s last-second decision to call for a review had the air of desperation. But ball-tracking had the legbefore appeal hitting the top of leg, and Williamson’s curiously mediocre Test record in England — he averages 26 from 10 innings — continued.

Walking off with f i gures of 9-4-8-2, Robinson looked a cricketer of substance. Nothing will erase the memory of those tweets, but runs and wickets might at least have eased the pain.