Trent Boult secures his place as the best of the worst batters

The batter powered a drive down the ground for four and punched the air with joy. His teammate approached from the other end to offer a fist-bump, then upgraded to a full hug. History had been made: Trent Boult had become the most prolific No 11 in Test history, level with Muttiah Muralitharan on 623 runs.

Briefly and entertainingly, he and Daryl Mitchell, grinning behind their grilles, battled for personal milestones, Boult desperate to become the best of all worst batters, Mitchell to complete a first career double-century before he ran out of partners. Their team’s total was already good enough for little else to matter, but neither won. Mitchell tried to hoick Matt Potts into the stands and missed completely, then top-edged through to the keeper to fall for 190. A superb, match-warping innings was over.

Having only played the first Test because Henry Nicholls caught Covid, Mitchell has two centuries in three innings. For all that he was dropped twice he was superb here, mining an outfield like an air hockey table for 27 boundaries. But this is a team in which he should feel at home and a batting line-up remarkable not just for its quality but for its homogeneity.

In the early 1990s, a distant and wildly different era when Britain was worrying about such long-forgotten fripperies as decrepit Conservative governments going to seed, the celebration of significant royal Jubilees and controversial proposals for lucrative breakaway football leagues, in New Zealand a strange phenomenon was occurring.

The birth years, in batting order, of their top seven in this match are 1992, 1992, 1991, 1991, 1991, 1990 and 1990. The self-isolating Kane Williamson was also born in 1990. For a few years New Zealanders (and Devon Conway’s