If you’re only as good as your last game, New Zealand are phenomenal and England concerning. But Christchurch is not Rawalpindi and nor is it Mumbai, and at the risk of stating the obvious these will be different teams in a different situation. Since they wrapped up a 3-0 series win at the Wankhede at the start of the month New Zealand have left out Will Young, who scored 244 at 48.80 in India and was named player of the series, and Ajaz Patel, who took 15 wickets in those three games, bringing back old-timers Tim Southee and Kane Williamson as well as a debutant seamer in Nathan Smith. Meanwhile since the loss that condemned them to a 2-1 series defeat in Pakistan last month England have gone from three spinners to one, given Ollie Pope the gloves and brought in a debutant of their own in No3 Jacob Bethell, veteran of 20 first-class games. If this isn’t quite a clean slate it is at least a slate that requires only minor washing up.

There seems to have been a lot of interesting Test cricket happening over the last couple of months, and I’m looking forward to a bit more. Welcome!

Since we already know the teams, this might be a good place to put them:

New Zealand XI: Tom Latham (capt), Devon Conway, Kane Williamson, Rachin Ravindra, Daryl Mitchell, Tom Blundell (wk), Glenn Phillips, Nathan Smith, Tim Southee, Matt Henry, Will O’Rourke.
England XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Jacob Bethell, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ollie Pope (wk), Ben Stokes (c), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse, Shoaib Bashir.
Umpires: Ahsan Raza (Pak) and Rod Tucker (Aus).
TV umpire: Adrian Holdstock (SA).