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Harry Brook hailed a game-changing century against New Zealand as his best yet after taming a tricky Wellington pitch and rescuing England team on day one of the second Test.
The bowlers from both sides enjoyed a field day on a lively surface at Basin Reserve, England rounded up for 280 before reducing the Black Caps to 86-5 in response.
A total of 15 wickets fell across three sessions at a rate of one every 5.4 overs but Brook was alone in dominating with bat in hand. He pounded out 123 runs in just 115 balls, blasting five fearless sixes and 11 fours.
Four of the Yorkshireman’s eight Test hundreds have been bigger than this one, including 171 in Christchurch last week and a career-best 317 in Multan two months ago, but he believes he has never been better.
The scoreboard was 26-3 when he walked to the crease and 43-4 soon after. But he stared down a pace attack that were making the most of helpful conditions, backing them into a corner with an array of devastating blows that turned the game on its head. Only a run out, and an ill-judged attempt at a single, could stop him.
“I think that might be my favourite hundred so far, I enjoyed that one a lot,” he said at the close. “Most of the balls came out of the middle of the bat and it feels pretty special to be batting like that.
“We were three down when I came in and the pitch was doing quite a bit. It was seaming and swinging so I’m just glad I put my attacking mode on. I really took it to them and put them under a lot of pressure.
“The best mode of defence for me was attack and thankfully it came off.”
Brook, who recently rose to second behind Joe Root in the world rankings, has now scored seven away centuries in just 10 appearances and averages a Bradmanesque 91.50 on the road.
To put his outrageous run of form into context, former England captains Michael Atherton and Alec Stewart both scored the same number of tons on their travels, but took 48 and 59 matches respectively.
Brook, who also passed 1,000 runs in 2024, kick-started his counter-attack by advancing down the pitch at Nathan Smith and launching him over extra cover and out of the ground.
He admitted that was a calculated risk, designed to mess with the seamer’s rhythm.
“I’m not sure you can run down (the pitch) on instinct. That’s got to be premeditated,” he explained. “They had to try and bowl at the stumps early on and I felt like the time to run down was then; cash in when it’s full. I just tried to take them off their length and stop them bowling on the stumps.”
Brook was supported by the resurgent Ollie Pope, whose 66 was the next-best score of the day by a distance, and later saw his good work rammed home by Brydon Carse.
The seamer could have lost heart when he bowled Kane Williamson with a beauty only to be denied by the tightest of no-ball calls. Instead, he charged in even harder to snap up the late wickets of Williamson and Daryl Mitchell as well as pulling off a difficult catch off Rachin Ravindra.
“I think the ball after he got the no-ball wicket was 92-93mph, he was fairly angry,” said Brook. “Every team needs a player like him, he bowls at 90mph, he’s diving and taking that amazing catch and we saw him come out with the bat and smack his first ball for four too. He’s a very valuable asset to us and an unbelievably good bloke.”
