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It might have taken place in a different format, but Harry Brook could not be striking the ball any better at the start of an Ashes winter.
Brook’s man-of-the-match 78 off 35 balls, made during a stunning century stand with Phil Salt, surged England to a seven win in eight Twenty20 internationals since he succeeded Jos Buttler as limited-overs captain and suggested he is finely tuned for the main event of the winter - the five-Test series against Australia starting next month.
Yes, there was a modicum of good fortune as Jimmy Neesham - head potentially scrambled by conceding 20 runs in the previous over - spurned a straightforward chance at long-on to dismiss him for 39. It also needed a review to overturn a leg-side caught behind decision when he was in the 20s.
But it was Brook who was chiefly responsible for England obliterating the previous record score of 208 for five at Hagley Oval, made by the New Zealanders against Bangladesh three years ago, crunching five sixes - three of which cleared the pavilion - along the way.
Salt had begun the carnage, by jabbing the second ball of the match over the rope at midwicket, yet later sat on his bat handle at the non-striker’s end and admired the union of power and poise off his third-wicket partner.
‘That's batting, isn't it? That's part of being a team. You have to take ego out of it. As soon as you start making it about yourself, that's when you're going to be in trouble and that's when you're going to put the team in trouble,’ said Salt, who fell 15 runs shy of equalling the record five international hundreds scored in this format by Glenn Maxwell and Rohit Sharma.
Harry Brook inspired England to a dominant 65-run T20 victory over New Zealand on Monday
The white-ball captain showed his full range of shots as he kept up his superb batting form
Ben Stokes (left) and his Test side are gearing up for the Ashes against Australia next month
They departed within three Kyle Jamieson deliveries, but Tom Banton swelled a position of 198 for four in the 18th over into England’s fifth biggest total with an unbeaten 29 off a dozen deliveries.
New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner praised the ‘smart’ tactics employed during the 129-run alliance between Brook and Salt: using the wind to clear the boundary on the shorter side and guiding into gaps for twos on the bigger one.
If New Zealand were to upgrade their record chase of 201, it required a faultless start, but Brydon Carse undermined such a prospect by striking twice with the new ball and spinners Adil Rashid and Liam Dawson then silenced the home crowd with a spell of four wickets in 20 balls.
Santner rallied from a position of 104 for six, with three sixes of his own, yet the required run rate was still touching 20 when he became Rashid’s final victim in figures of four for 32.
After England came unstuck on a more capricious pitch in the series opener on Saturday, Brook promised his team would double down on their attacking mantra - ‘We’ve got such a strong batting line-up, we can keep going,’ he said.
And the end result - a 65-run victory - means they head into Thursday’s match in Auckland with an insurmountable lead.
