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England on the Horne of a dilemma

On current evidence, England and New Zealand must rank as the most boring Test sides in contemporary cricket. Thus, when they clash -- though 'clash' seems too strong a word to describe the ongoing Test at Lord's -- the result turns out to be one big yawn.

The day began with Chris Cairns predictably firing out the tail of England's batting, to dismiss Nasser Hussain's bold new team for 186 -- the 12th time England has been shot out under 200 in the first innings in their last 23 Tests, a statistic that indicates that England have in the recent past been on the back foot, more often than not, at the outset of Test matches.

Mathew Horne -- a gritty, if hardly pretty, batsman -- then played one of those grinding, hang-in-there Test innings to score an anchoring century that, at close of play, had taken the Kiwis ahead of England by 56 runs, with four wickets still in hand.

In fact, if the second new ball hadn't fired out three Kiwi batsmen -- including centurion Horne, who after 21 strokeless deliveries played after completing his century, put bat to Dean Headley's ball only to exge to third slip -- England's plight might have been considerably worse. Andrew Caddick helped the late recovery somewhat by finding the outside edge of Craig McMillan's bat after the batsman had made heavy weather of 30 deliveries to score just 3.

Horne's was one of those grim vigils that would have done justice to a Horatio on the bridge -- though, under friendly skies, a clueless English attack hardly seemed to merit such doggedness. In the event, Horne -- who follows the likes of Michael Slater, Mathew Elliott and Saurav Ganguly in making a 100 on his first appearance at Lord's -- batted 84 overs for his 100 runs.

Some part of those runs should, by rights, be credited to Phil Tuffnell, who got both hands to a pull by Horne, off Caddick, at fine leg, only to let it go to grass. At the time, Horne was batting 56.

Earlier, at the start of the Kiwi first innings, Headley came up with a huge appeal against Mathew Bell, which was duly sustained by umpire Mervyn Kitchen. The general presumption was that the shout was for caught behind -- Kitchen, however, ruled LBW, though when the ball hit the pads, it was on the climb and looking to sail over the stumps.

Stephen Fleming, whose batting form is a bit suspect in recent times, and Nathan Astle, whose debacles in the World Cup make his continued presence in the side a bit of a surprise, were both taken down the leg side by the keeper, Chris Read.

That brought Horne and Roger Twose together -- the latter seemingly electric in his strokeplay, but only in comparison with the stodgy Horne. From 112/3, the pair took the score to 232 before Twose mishit a pull off Headley soon after completing his 50.

Twose too got his share of luck when a skied pull was put down by Alec Stewart, when the batsman was on 34.

With three days to go and New Zealand ahead on the first innings, the smart money is on them to win the Test and level the series.

England's cricketing authorities meanwhile have ordered an enquiry into the Alex Tudor incident, which left the selectors with a major part of their faces covered in smelly egg.

The way it happened, Alex Tudor was on Sunday informed that he was part of the Test team. At the time, however, he had an injury niggle on his knee, which his home county, Surrey, was aware of.

The Surrey management booked Tudor into hospital for a scan on Wednesday -- with England's selectors still in the dark, and the Test due to start on Thursday.

In the event, the scan revealed that Tudor needed to rest his knee and take care of an emerging problem. Which meant that the England management, with less than 12 hours to go for start of play in the second Test, found themselves one bowler short, and had to ask Angus Fraser to make a 200-mile drive to get to Lord's and be on standby.

The Surrey county management has been asked to tender an explanation.