1st Final: New Zealand 0-0 (Latham 0, Young 0) Anderson starts with five slips and throws a couple of first beauties. In fact, it sends a lovely first shot. Sounder and accurate. A maiden. As if it had never been. Tom Latham is attentive, respectful. We are on the move!
We’ve had the anthems and the players are heading to their positions.
Exciting that. We are about to get started. I’ve had a few requests for an overseas TMS link, if anyone has one, let me do it and I’ll share it. Thanks!
Updated at 11.03 BST
Jimmy Anderson will be back in steam in a few minutes, his 26th Test match here at Lord’s. Remarkable.
Imagine being him right now. Imagine…
Dean Kinsella has the first email to enter the inbox and it feels weird.
“The first morning of the first summer test and that old flip flop feeling in my belly. A feeling of … is it hope? “It could be, Dean.
For you, it’s got a little cloudy at Lord’s, I’m just saying that. Other than that, Broad (complete with headband) and Anderson are making some warm-up deliveries to the field.
Updated at 11.00 BST
Andy Bull is stuck in:
There are about 15 minutes left for the game to start. It’s time to get caught up in a bit of reading before the game. Here is Ali at the new dawn …
Updated at 10.53 BST
England will start with the ball in hand and we will have a look at the test debutant and gunslinger of the first blows of the county championship: Matty Potts.
Updated at 10.48 BST
A nice touch of a Stokes without a blazer in the draw
Updated at 10.42 BST
New Zealand has won the draw and will be baptized first!
England: Crawley, Lees, Pope, Root, Bairstow, Stokes, Foakes, Potts, Leach, Broad, Anderson.
New Zealand: Latham, Young, Williamson, Conway, Mitchell, Blundell, de Grandhomme, Southee, Jamieson, Patel, Boult.
Preamble
A new dawn has broken, right?
Can things only get better ?!
Hello and welcome to Lord’s for the first day of the first test of the summer. It’s a glorious day in north-west London, the sun shining over the orange-paved pavilion, the light breeze crunching the oaks of the city center. A perfect day to restart the red ball and end all the red ball resets.
It’s time to start the Baz n ‘Ben (and Bob) show. It should be fun.
Jim here at the headquarters to take you to the first part of the day, I can currently see the England players doing their warm-ups with their gray gray Squid-Game-inspired tracksuits. Hopefully the next five days are a little less bloody than that. His opponents, New Zealand, are good, very good; the current world champions of testing, although they are currently a bit undercooked. However, England have only won once in the last 177 test outings. But it’s a new dawn, a new day and I feel … nervous, but optimistic.
On the way to the ground this morning I passed by Kane Williamson with a net and Sir Alastair Cook climbed into my lift to the media center. Do it the way you want, but I take it as a sure sign that it’s a smoothie morning … from my elevated but idiotic perspective, the ground looks creamy, but stained green.
I will bring news of the draw and the teams (we already know the one from England and its baptismal order) as soon as possible. It’s time to hit the coffee stand and grab the tool. Get in touch with email or twitters, there’s a lot to talk about.