BUMBLE ON THE TEST: Day-night Tests are just not cricket and Ben Stokes’ England team is selfless

England are in an extremely promising position after the first day of the opening Test match against New Zealand.

Ben Stokes’ side impressed again with their adventurous style of cricket and decided to go with a bold declaration to allow some time for some brilliance with the ball.

Sportsmail‘s David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd takes a look at the opening day of play, as well as some of his finest memories from touring New Zealand.

It’s just not cricket

I am not a fan of day-night Tests. Not because of the pink ball or the floodlights — but because I don’t want to be up at that time of night.

I was brought up with cricket being played during the day and I can’t get past that. It is the same when I am working on T20 franchise cricket around the world. What am I doing at a cricket ground at midnight? I should be in bed.

A dicier declaration!

England’s declaration yesterday was the second-earliest in the first innings of a Test. The earliest was by Pakistan at Lord’s in 1974 — and I was playing.

That was a controversial match. Pakistan accused England of skulduggery with the pitch. They said we had allowed water to get under the covers to help Derek Underwood bowl them out.

All that had happened was that water had got under the covers down the slope, but it finished up at Government level.

The game was called off without any play on day five even though there was bright sunshine.

This team is selfless 

Ben Duckett and Harry Brook both got out in the 80s. While the disappointment for a coach would be that they haven’t gone on to get big hundreds, the pleasing thing would be that there is no selfishness in this team. 

The team philosophy is, ‘Get as many runs as quickly as you can and let’s get bowling’. In days gone by, many players would just help themselves to a hundred, but within this England team that has gone.

Gilbert’s record will go

Gilbert Jessop was nicknamed ‘The Croucher’ and has a stand named after him at Bristol. It is incredible that his record set in 1902 for the fastest Test century by an England player (76 balls) still stands, but it will go soon. When you highlight that sort of record, the big players will sit up and say, ‘I am going to have a piece of that’.

I took on the Mount

Mount Maunganui is a gorgeous little coastal town. The last time I was there, I stayed in the car park on the beach in a campervan with Nasser Hussain. I’ve never been bitten as much!

Sky obviously got the campervan on the cheap because it had seen better days.

Mike Atherton also thought it was a good idea for us to walk up The Mount. It nearly put my lights out. It started off OK, a gradual ascent, but I was like Chris Bonington getting up the last bit.

Talk about a test pilot!

My other memory of my last visit to New Zealand was getting in a helicopter to view the devastation of the Christchurch earthquake.

We had pictures taken with the pilot before we set off. Atherton turned and said to me: ‘You don’t know who this is, do you?’

‘He’s the pilot,’ I replied.

Atherton retorted: ‘This is possibly the greatest rugby player that there has ever been — Richie McCaw.’

I had no idea who the lad was!