The wounds of Ashes had not yet healed when New Zealand’s storm came at Lord’s, England’s batting trembled due to the havoc of Kyle Jamieson.

After suffering a shameful and historic 4-1 defeat in the Ashes series 2025-26 played on Australian soil, it was believed that the England team would learn a lesson from its mistakes. Under the captaincy of Ben Stokes and the supervision of Brendon McCullum, the English team claimed to take the field with a modified format of its aggressive strategy ‘Bazball’. But England’s claims were dashed on the very first day of the first Test match against New Zealand at the historic ground of Lord’s. In front of the disciplined attack and excellent swing of the Kiwi bowlers, the top order of the host team once again fell apart like a pack of cards and by the third session, the team has reached a very embarrassing situation by losing 8 important wickets for only 118 runs. Jack Crawley’s card was clean, debut star Emilio Gay also flopped and then the rain came. When the England team took the field after the toss on the first day of the Lord’s Test, the team management left out Jack Crawley, who was struggling with poor form, and gave a chance to young batsman Emilio Gay to debut. Emilio Gay started the match brilliantly by hitting a four, which made it look like he would play a long innings. But New Zealand’s 31-year-old experienced fast bowler Kyle Jamieson soon ended his game. Gay scored only 8 runs and was caught by Darryl Mitchell standing in the slips and England got the first blow on the total score of 16 runs. Soon after, heavy rain fell on the field, due to which the game had to be stopped and the umpires announced lunch prematurely. Till lunch, England’s score was 1 wicket for 24 runs in 10 overs. After lunch, there was chaos among the Kiwi bowlers, Root-Duckett and Bethel surrendered. When the game resumed after the rain, the New Zealand bowlers made life difficult for the English batsmen with their dangerous length and swing. Nathan Smith bowled brilliantly and gave the second big blow to England by dismissing Ben Duckett LBW on the personal score of 19 runs. The host team could not even recover from this shock when the new batsman Jacob Bethel was also caught on an incoming ball by William O’Rourke and returned to the pavilion after being LBW. With this, England’s score became 3 wickets for 33 runs. Due to continuous falling of wickets, the pressure was completely on England. Taking advantage of this pressure, O’Rourke made England’s most reliable batsman Joe Root his victim. Root tried to play the ball lightly, but the ball took the outer edge of his bat and went straight into the gloves of the wicketkeeper. Shortly after this, wicketkeeper batsman Jamie Smith was also bowled by a straight ball from Kyle Jamieson without playing any shot, which uprooted his off stump. Harry Brook scored a fighting half-century, captain Ben Stokes was also left in the middle, at one time star batsman Harry Brook took the responsibility of handling the innings of England, which had lost half the team by just a few runs. Brook hit some attractive and powerful shots as soon as he came to the crease, which increased the run rate and gave some relief to the faltering English innings. After this, captain Ben Stokes stepped onto the crease and an attempt was made between the two to take the innings forward. However, captain Stokes also could not face the Kiwi bowlers for long and was out after scoring just 12 runs and playing irresponsible shots. After the captain’s dismissal, tail batsman Gus Atkinson also walked out cheaply. Harry Brook, who was fighting alone at the other end, batted brilliantly and scored a half-century of 56 runs, but in the 32nd over of the day, Nathan Smith dismissed England’s remaining hopes. Kyle Jamieson took 4 wickets, Kiwi team eyes clean sweep after tea. The entire credit for this tremendous success that New Zealand got on the very first day of the match goes to their disciplined line-length and continuous swing bowling. While Kyle Jamieson and William O’Rourke bowled lethally in the beginning, Nathan Smith put England on the backfoot by taking middle-order wickets. Kyle Jamieson has been the most successful bowler from New Zealand, who has so far shown the way to the pavilion to 4 batsmen while bowling dangerous spells. Apart from them, Nathan Smith and William O’Rourke have got 2-2 successes. Now after the tea break, New Zealand’s bowlers will be eyeing to take the remaining two wickets of England as soon as possible and establish their complete control over the match by batting in the first innings.