England under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum are more relaxed - and it shows

Not since the amateur era have England’s preparations for a day of Test cricket been so relaxed as they are now under the command of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum – and it showed.

With the resumption at 11am, England’s players did not leave their Nottingham hotel until 9.30am. Previous England captains such as Graham Gooch and Alastair Cook used to be in the nets at 8 o’clock; now each player does what he wants.

This is the new way of doing things, and almost anything is worth a go in the attempt to resurrect England’s Test cricket. Stokes and McCullum could lead an SAS commando unit, and rank among the most aggressive cricketers of all time. Yet their approach to practice, at least in mid-series, is ultra-relaxed, and its effectiveness can only be judged in the course of time.

An extra factor in allowing the England players to arrive at the ground much later than under preceding regimes (where head coaches might want to be seen cracking the whip) was to give the bowlers more time to recover, after fielding the whole of day one. Anyone who wants to come early for extra practice, like Cook or Gooch of old, is of course enabled to do so.

So the New Zealanders were beavering away in their two nets on the Hound Road side of the Trent Bridge ground long before England arrived. Daryl Mitchell, not relaxing after reaching 81 overnight, was busy playing himself in again an hour and a half before the start: but if he had not expended so much energy on batting earlier in the day, might Mitchell have held the simple chance that came his way at first slip in the evening session?

The tourists, being New Zealand cricketers not rugby players, were also attentive to the punters who lined the steps from the Trent Bridge pavilion down