Well some real cricket at last.

New Zealand will be looking for revenge for their home series defeat in the English winter - and will start as underdogs, which will take off the pressure from the Kiwi team.

England on the other hand need to keep up the momentum of the series win in New Zealand, and pressure is on players like Vaughan - Strauss - Anderson and Broad, with Key and Shah along with others, breathing down the batsmens necks, and Hoggard and even Harmison waiting for Anderson or Broad to fail.

Match starts at 11am.

Match comments on this thread please.

__________________
Ern

I'm looking forward to this series, partially because it seems like we haven't had any cricket for a while, partially because it will make a nice change from the frenetic T20 and partially because I want to see how far this current England side have moved forwards since the last series against the Kiwi's.

I don't consider New Zealand to be particularly strong opponents and I don't think that's being unfair to New Zealand, they're a side shorn of a lot of experienced players and have many inexperienced and unproven players who are just starting out in their game. Some of them look very promising, particularly the young fast bowler and it will be fascinating to see not only how he adapts and uses the English conditions, but how he adapts and uses the slope at Lords. Lords will prove a challenge for him as it does many fast bowlers who've never played there.

New Zealand in my opinion are very well lead. I've been particularly impressed with Vettori's steady progress, not just in terms of his bowling but in terms of his whole game, bowling, batting, fielding and Captaincy. The influence of Fleming is clear to see, and it's probably one of the reasons I like Vettori's style as I liked Flemings as well, who I think, in his time was the best Captain in world cricket.

It's a great shame New Zealnd don't have a larger pool of players to choose from in terms of World Class and quality, as with Vettori's leadership they could make real progress in the World rankings.

So for my money this series is about how far England have moved their game forwards, in all aspects of the game and how a well lead Kiwi side, but with a lot of inexperience cope when England apply some pressure to them in their own conditions. The battle is about Englands bowlers against New Zealands inexperienced batting lineup and I beleive that if England apply enough pressure, New Zealands batting will repeatedly collapse. I'm not concerned about Englands batting, I know what they're capable of doing if they knuckle down and graft hard enough and New Zealand simply don't have the bowling firepower to unduly worry them.

For me it's crunch time for Vaughan and Strauss as I don't beleive that side should contain both of them, it's one or the other for me, particularly when Flintoff comes back.

NZ really can't lose here. If they win that'd be fantastic, if they lose it'll be what was expected of them.

It's really about player development this series, there are so many young/inexperienced players in the kiwi team it's about building a team for the future.

Interseting talking point is McCullum's promotion to number five. I don't know if it's a good move whether he's going to be capable of playing to the conditions or not waits to be seen. I'd have preferred Vettori at 5 if they were going to promote anyone.

Not a great weather forecast today at Lord's, nor tomorrow come to that. Looks unlikely that the toss will be made on time, with Cricinfo reporting that it is still drizzling, grey and rather gloomy. Welcome to the English summer!

In Prague today, it's a lovely day for cricket: blue skies, about 23-24C, the birds singing in the trees and God in his Heaven. Not entirely the same in my office, but I guess I can't have everything.

Let's hope for some cricket later on (at Lord's that is; no chance of it here).

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

OF's right, toss is delayed, the umpires are checking the weather again in 15 minutes.

That's about right. I'm about 6 or 7 miles from Lords and that's the weather I have as well. Grey overcast and drizzle. It's typical, towards the end of last week, the weekend and early this week it was beautiful here. Blue skies, lovely warm sunshine, so much so that I got a little burnt at the weekend! Then yesterday, it got cooler, with scattered sunshine and cloud, it was a lovely evening then late evening it started drizzling.

As you rightly say, welcome to the English summer, welcome to the english weather, famous for its changeability worldwide. Just looked out the window, it's not raining but it's still pretty overcast.

... BUT England have won the toss and elected to field. Play will start at 1220BST.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

Absolutely. They can't really lose here and sometimes teams play their best cricket when in that kind of relaxed frame of mind. I just can't see the inexperienced New Zealander batsmen dealing with, although some are inexperienced themselves, fairly high level English County bowlers in their own conditions. It's fair to say I think that the conditions in this country are not that alien to New Zealand, but even still I think Englands bowlers will exploit them better than New Zealands will.

With the sunshine we've had recently, I would expect that pitch to be pretty dry and hard. The small amount of rain we've had overnight is negligble really and will only speed up the outfield. So a pitch with plenty of pace and bounce, but fairly flat and true. Should be a decent contest between bat and ball, although the batsmen may have the better of it.

If and when we can get it going!

Dang! Rain again. Lunch taken at 1230.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

I think New Zealand will be wishing the rain had stayed as they are getting a pummeling,79-4 with 2 wickets each to Anderson and Broad.Sidebottom has been dire so far.