England vs New Zealand | Welcome to our first day of live coverage of England’s second test against New Zealand at Edgbaston. Join us for the latest news, analysis, color, and commentary.
12:50 p.m. : Dom Sibley brings up a fifty
Dom Sibley scored a fifty for England on Daryl Mitchell’s four-square leg. Sibley is no longer 31, and Rory Burns is no longer 28. According to our legend Shiva Jayaraman, the fifty-course booth in England was opened in 14 home tests at the start. Your last one was against India in 2018 at The Oval between Alastair Cook and Keaton Jennings!
Crowd Goes Wild| England Vs New Zealand
I don’t know about you, but hearing the crowd scream for every border – Dom Sibley and Rory Burns both hit two fours – gives me chills after so much time without hearing the sound of packed stands. Every day of Lord’s first test, 6,700 fans attended, but in Edgbaston, the figure is more than double. Imagine what it’s like to be there. Consider this:
This is the second-largest sports crowd in the UK since the pandemic began, after only 20,000 or so people attended Leicester City’s FA Cup final win at Wembley last month, and the largest in-home England in 2019 Ashes test.
From the perspective of England, Edgbaston is perhaps the ideal location for returning fans: the players love the atmosphere here, especially at the notoriously harsh Eric Hollies stand, and their record in Birmingham is very good – or until Australia finished a winning eleven-game race in all sizes in the first test of the Ashes.
There are approximately 17 000 fans in the crowd, who all had to do a lateral flow test 24 hours before the start of a pilot event by the Government (but not under-16s who could not consent to medicine), with loud cheers for all borders, an ironic jeer when Matt Henry’s first one was broad, and warm applause in the moment of unity. There’s a lot of fantastic costumes going on, hundreds of pints have already been poured, and hopefully, the ominous grey clouds don’t ruin the festival.
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