Nick Compton and Alastair Cook lead England towards safety in Dunedin

England 167 and 234-1; New Zealand 460-9 dec
Compton hits maiden Test century for England
England's Nick Compton and Alastair Cook
England's Nick Compton and Alastair Cook. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

It is the sheer narrative of Test match cricket, the chance to tell a cricket story rather than a snappy one-liner, that attracts. A game can bring punch and counter-punch and cut-and-thrust; disaster can be followed by more of the same or the sort of redemption that occasionally comes from drinking in the last-chance saloon and emerging sober – or dash vibrant optimism to fragments in a few hours of imbibing.

From Test cricket can come a situation where a side so apparently out for the count that defeat might seem an inevitability can regenerate its fighting spirit to such an extent that a pair of opening batsmen can, off their own ringing blades, in their attempt to stave off defeat, compile a partnership that on its own exceeds that from all those in the first innings put together. That is the essence of Test match cricket as witnessed by the 5,000 people, swaddled and anoraked against the autumnal chill that has broken a memorable summer of weather, who sat largely enraptured in the sylvan parkland setting of University Oval.

Alastair Cook and Nick Compton delved into the record books here and sent them away for reprinting. Setting out with the primary intention of erasing a first-innings deficit of 293, they knocked a good chunk of it with an opening partnership of 231 that obliterated as England's highest against New Zealand the 223 that Graeme Fowler and Chris Tavare, cheeky chap and his straight man, made in the second innings at the Oval in 1983 against Richard Hadlee, Ewan Chatfield, Lance Cairns and John Bracewell, which similarly exceeded its own team's first-innings total.

It was the third, and highest, hundred stand of their five-match alliance. Cook made a century of a kind so familiar that it no longer requires a thesaurus to dig for new superlatives as there are no more but rather a simple cut-and-paste from previous descriptions: studious defence; unwavering concentration; some bog-standard cuts, one of which raced him on to 99; the occasional sweep, one of which took him to his hundred next ball; some punchy cover drives; and enough milk from the leg side to keep Dunedin in yoghurt for a month.

It was the 24th hundred of his career, which merely extends his own record as England's highest century maker; and his sixth in his seven Tests as captain, missing out only in the final Test of the last India series in Nagpur. He seemed impregnable until shortly before the close when, against Trent Boult with the second new ball and after five-and-a-half hours, he pushed a little away from his body, edged and BJ Watling took the catch behind the wicket. He had hit 15 fours.

Only once during his innings did he find himself in trouble, when, on 109, Compton called for a quick single; had Watling taken the resultant throw in front of and back onto the stumps in the modern manner that can save half a yard rather than the old way of standing behind them, he might conceivably have been run out. Such small details of technique really do make a difference.

Nagpur it was too, albeit the old ground, where Cook made the first of
those hundreds, and now Compton, in his fifth Test, got to experience the euphoria himself. This was a big test not just of Compton's technique but also his temperament following his four-ball first-innings duck. The England management had resisted the clamour to jettison Compton and promote Joe Root in his place, and now he returned the faith, batting fluently after an unsteady start, and driving strongly with giant stride to the ball and full face follow-through of the bat.

Only in the 90s did he start to get nervy as Cook, past his hundred, began to ease away from him. He almost ran himself out on 95 going for a streaky adrenaline-fuelled second and then, having got to 99, saw the captain trudge back to the dressing room. The delight on his face and his leap of triumph as he ran his single to midwicket acknowledged selection vindicated and he returned to the backslapping dressing room having made an unbeaten 102 (10 fours and a quarter of an hour longer than Cook) of England's 234 for one, which left them with a deficit of only 59.

After 40 minutes of the morning session, however, an England defeat remained a possibility despite the excellent batting pitch. Brendon McCullum, given the sort of licence to thrill that makes him one of the game's finest and most damaging limited-overs batsmen, ran the England bowlers ragged, adding 58 from 52 balls before he called an end to the innings at 460 at the fall of the ninth wicket, Bruce Martin, for 41.

The Black Caps captain, brooding on 44 overnight, added a further 30 runs, with three sixes, from 17 balls before he laced one almost into the stratosphere, leaving Jimmy Anderson time to ponder the meaning of life before gravity returned the ball to earth. By then McCullum and the debutant spinner Martin, already having enjoyed taking four wickets in the first England innings, had added 77 for the eighth wicket in 13 overs.

Quite what England's tactics were during this period was hard to fathom. The seamers have seen enough of McCullum on this trip to know that he sits back and waits for the short ball and yet Broad, in particular, persisted with that mode of attack against both McCullum and Martin, no mug with the bat but someone for whom a good-length delivery hitting top of the stumps ought to be sufficient. Sometimes the thought processes of bowlers and indeed captains, when presented with such situations, work in mysterious ways.