Ben on...the slightly better team won

That was an entertaining, absorbing and mystifying series. Really, Southee's outrageous hit-out to close the series seems to sum up so much – great stuff, but the wrong person at the wrong time.

So a fine series, and probably a result close to what many were predicting (but god-damn why did it have to be a come from behind 1-2?). England were certainly deserving winners. I personally had written off the series before it had begun. I didn't predict a score line, but if you had told me back then that we'd win a test I don't think I would have been disappointed. Given the gulf between the teams before the start of the series, you'd have to say that England played below their ability, whereas overall New Zealand probably exceeded expectations, narrowing the gap.

Andrew Miller at Cricinfo has done some analysis that seems to show this. He has rated the English and the Black Caps out of 10. What I've done below is arrange things to match up the players from each team that fill the same role (very approximately of course) and indicated for each role which team "won" by colour (purple for a tie).

New Zealand England
How 6       Cook 5
Bell 3      Vaughan 5
Fleming 6   Strauss 6
Sinclair 2  Pietersen 7
Taylor 8    Bell 6
McCullum 6  Ambrose 8
Oram 7      Collingwood 6
Vettori 7   Panesar 6
Martin 6    Harmison 2
Mills 7     Hoggard 4
Southee 9   Sidebottom 9
Gillespie 5 Anderson 7
Elliot 3    Broad 8
Patel 6

Surprisingly, given the result of the series, England weren't notably better performers. In fact, New Zealand wins out in six positions and England in only five.