The skies are gray and heavy, like a wet blanket that will soon be thrown over the whole series. The field is so full of plants that animals that live in the woods have moved in. The outfield is wet, and sometimes a cold drizzle falls on biting winds. And while the local bowlers, who are all big and tall, are nimble and strong in their warm-up overs on the practice pitches, the Sri Lankan batters, who are covered in wool sweaters, face throwdowns and look like they are about to be sacrificed on an altar of seam bowling.

Get the coin. Put Sri Lanka in. Watch the ball jump gleefully off the edges of the bats and into the hands of the slip cordon as batter after batter falls like marionettes, the scoreboard showing 45-3, then 67-5, and a few swipes at the end pushing the total just over 100. Here are the usual parts of Sri Lanka’s day one story on a ground like Hagley Oval.

When they were here before, they didn’t have to bat first, but they were still out after 138 runs. The last time, they had players like Kumar Sangakkara on their team, but they still lost by 104 runs. Unless Sri Lanka pulls off a near-miracle in the second innings, which they do from time to time, these are game-changing messes. (Then New Zealand will go up to bat and put on half a million for six while smiling politely, which will only show how bad they were before.)

Then this happened. Four years after the last time they played a Test in New Zealand, where they were beaten by 423 runs at this same site, they had an amazing day of batting. Of defensive play that was mostly okay and technique that was pretty good. Had Sri Lanka’s batters done the work to figure out where their off stump was before they started a Test on foreign soil? Any Sri Lanka fan should feel a tear of pure pride just thinking about it.

Kusal Mendis, who may have been the best player in the XI, took the lead. The most important part of his 87 out of 83 was how he judged length on a surface that was a bit bumpy. When it was on a good length, he defended close to his body, almost always with soft hands, so that when the ball came in and took the edge, it bounced short of the slips. Most of the time, though, he defended inside the line, mostly using his bat to block balls that could hit him in front of the wickets or get past him to the wickets.

When New Zealand’s bowlers bowled fuller and tried hard to get an edge that could be caught, Mendis gave his all to his front-foot strokes, sometimes driving it with authority, other times sending it squirting off the face of the bat through backward point, and other times flicking it deliciously off his pads.

He got 50 runs off of 40 balls, but New Zealand’s bowlers didn’t have a great morning. 44 of those runs came from fours. He and Dimuth Karunaratne, who was just as steady but less aggressive against balls that could be hit, put together a 137-run partnership at the second wicket that was the key to Sri Lanka’s progress on day one. They would get out in consecutive overs, but when they did, they were often replaced by better batsmen.

Angelo Mathews waited for the shorter balls and scored 38 of his 47 runs through the leg side. He also hit a couple of fours off his pads when the ball was close to him. Dinesh Chandimal liked to hit the ball to the off side, and he did so six times. As Dhananjaya de Silva batted with Kasun Rajitha near the end of the day, he made boundaries whenever he could.

Their scoring areas were different, but almost all of Sri Lanka’s top seven batters covered the stumps, didn’t rush at balls until they were set, didn’t mind when deliveries beat their bats, and didn’t chase seaming balls outside their stumps. Even when bowled at (mostly by Tim Southee and Matt Henry), they didn’t give up, which is something they often do when the ball is turning.

Given Sri Lanka’s long tail and lack of experience in the field, which New Zealand can easily take advantage of, 305 for 6 is not a great first-day score. It is possible that New Zealand will win the match. But given the situation, Sri Lanka were good enough. And it’s not often that you can say that about Sri Lanka on the first day of a match in New Zealand.

Sometimes almost everything that makes up a Test match is found in a single ball. One of those balls was the one that knocked Pat Cummins out of the game on the third morning in Delhi. It had the blunt precision of the Indian spinners, the deadly glide that made this pitch so hard to play on, and the sweep, a high-risk, high-reward shot so controversial that a thousand autopsies were written about it.

And there was one more thing. After the ball slipped under Cummins‘ bat, it hit the inside edge of the outside stump, bounced off the side of the middle stump and landed in KS Bharat’s gloves.

The ball didn’t spin sharply, but it didn’t go all the way with the arm either. After it was thrown, it straightened just a little. It also stayed low before bouncing off the stumps twice. Bharat had followed the ball all the way, even as Cummins took a wild swing, and he had collected it cleanly.

It didn’t matter because the ball was dead by the time he reached it, but he did a good job with his glove.

Later that day, when India had lost four wickets and were 27 runs away from their target, Bharat was moved up the order and scored a brilliant unbeaten 23 off 22 balls, including three perfectly timed fours to cover and a solid knock with a slog-swept six.

In his first two Test innings, Bharat had scored 8 and 6 in the first two games of this series. He must have felt much better after that start because he played on Sunday. Some watching from the outside might have even thought he was trying to save his career with that performance.

But India probably wouldn’t have seriously considered taking Bharat out of the game after Delhi, even if he had done nothing in the second innings. They probably know that anyone can score a number of low scores on difficult pitches, and they may have seen glimpses of Bharat’s counter-attacking potential during his brief stint with the Indian national team

It took a long time for these things to happen.

In May 2018, Indian senior team officials selected Bharat as the goalkeeper for the four-day tour and Rishabh Pant as the goalkeeper for the 50-over tour. The Indian senior team was also touring England that summer, so the A tour was a shadow tour. At the time, officials felt that Bharat was India’s best pure goalkeeper and Pant was an exciting batsman whose glovework needed work.

When Wriddhiman Saha got injured and could not join the England tour, India included Pant in its Test team in place of Bharat. The genius is going in his own direction.

But Bharat remained an important player in India’s second team. Since the beginning of 2018, he has played 19 first-class matches for the India A team, which is more than any other player except Abhimanyu Easwaran, who bats first. In those India A matches, he has scored 971 runs at a rate of 48.55, including three hundreds.

Last year, when India took Saha out of its test team, Bharat took his place. So it made sense that Bharat made his debut when Pant was injured. The Indian team management may have been tempted by Ishan Kishan’s competing claims, but they chose Bharat at the start of this Border-Gavaskar series.

At the start of the 2019-20 home season, India dropped Pant from the Test programme XI and brought back Saha for a series against South Africa. Virat Kohli described Saha as the best goalkeeper in the world and they felt his good glove work was important on India’s winding tracks. They felt that Pant still needed to work on his goalkeeping. Pant worked on it and became a world-class goalkeeper when India played England in early 2021. Until then, however, Saha was still the first choice for home games.

At the start of this series between India and Australia, the same idea was in play. India appreciates how good Bharat is with the bat, but they know he is their best goalkeeper when Pant is not around.

Ben Stokes had only recently broken the record for Test sixes when he told previous holder Brendon McCullum that Harry Brook would soon break it. Joe Root’s admiration for Brook’s “extraordinary” way of “almost forcing Test attacks” smacked of jealousy. At Mount Maunganui, two modern Test greats were swarming within 24 hours of a young man who was to make their mark.

Mark Wood said earlier this winter, during the Pakistan T20I series in September and October, that he saw a bit of AB de Villiers at Brook. Back in the summer of 2022, when Stokes actively decided against selecting Harry Brook, he somehow managed to make him big. He did so well that he almost broke the captain’s promise to trust a lineup that had won five of the last six Tests.

English cricket has never been kind to the public. And we are not talking about the kind of praise Stokes and Root received early in their careers, when they were still finding their feet among illustrious teammates. This was real, high-profile NBA hype, the kind you get when a rookie becomes the linchpin of a franchise in his first year. Other countries would trade their mothers to get it.

The sigh of “that boy, man” that rings out with every shot Harry Brook takes. The quiet disbelief you feel when you see someone who looks so commanding so early in his journey. The reactions he evokes in the stands and on the turf: he holds their attention, he gets them roaring while remaining calm, like a DJ, who becomes a firecracker, and then the palpable disappointment when he finally leaves. Even the similarities to Kevin Pietersen are so striking that you have to wonder what the man himself thinks. Pietersen was a singular genius. And yet this boy struts around, picking lengths and hitting b

Only this hype has changed in recent months. It’s no longer just a squishy concept, and it now feels like we’re doing some kind of due diligence by promising so much in its name. Brook is already exceeding expectations.

“I think he’s going to be a global superstar,” Stokes said after England’s win at Mount Maunganui, where Brook boosted England’s batting pace with 89 and 54 and was named player of the match for the third straight year. The England captain is usually the one asking the media to ease up on the pressure. At this moment, he seems to think it’s all just fact.

“You can tell if a player has what it takes, but you never know if they’re going to be successful,” Root said. “If you throw them into the unknown, can they handle the pressure and everything else? It was a pleasure to watch him come in here and play the way he did

Brook has now scored six runs of fifty or more in his first eight innings, for a total of 623 runs at an average of 87.71. Only five players have scored more runs on as many hits, which is remarkable in itself, especially considering that Brook’s game ultimately comes with a trade-off: he can leave runs out in the middle by taking more risks for the good of the team.

The fact that he has scored three hundreds in six innings, while only one man (Mohammad Azharuddin) has done so in fewer innings, shows that he strikes an incredible balance. However, it’s worth noting that this is a unique balance.

Looking at the statistics after just five Tests, he has taken 643 knocks for his 623 runs, which equates to a batting rate of 96.9 and puts him in the far corner of the chart as an outlier. Only Adam Gilchrist (440 at 81.8) and David Warner (383 at 85.5) have a similar record.

Incidentally, none of this is a fluke, even if you discount the weaker passing attacks. Brook has regularly participated in a regimen of volunteer training sessions. With not much to do in Pakistan, he was frequently at the gym, working diligently on a strength program to help him increase his weight.

This winter, his quest for self-improvement manifested itself in other ways. During the T20 World Cup, he greeted his batting coach, Mike Hussey, at the start of each training session and asked him what he should work on. Brook felt that the legendary Australian knew much more about his craft than he did. “What else can I add to my game?” was the overarching theme of their meetings.

He consulted with Martin Speight, his old cricket coach at Sedbergh who is now his mentor, after playing spinner Abrar Ahmed badly off the pitch in the first innings at Multan. Harry Brook scored 108 runs in the second innings after quickly figuring out what had gone wrong.

Amazingly, even in the middle of the field, he seems to be constantly evaluating, analysing and improving his game. Often to the amusement of his partner on the other end of the line.

“You should hear the conversations he has out there,” Root said. “He’s spraying himself … not to calm himself down, but to get it out of his system before he plays the next ball

Root sees this as a positive sign. A sign of “inner confidence” rather than an overburdened soul flagellating himself. “That’s a big reason why he’s going to be successful for a long time.”

When a player makes a spectacular appearance, people often expect him to stumble. For example, when the Australian fast attack comes at him with short balls. Harry Brook could improve in this area, but only relative to the quality of the rest of his game. Nobody is perfect, and only about three people in the world can play the short ball well.

There will be a regression to a Brook-specific standard that is still greater than most. But with each step forward, that regression seems further and further away. Aside from the mental and technical distractions that come with increasing numbers of short passing players, Harry Brook has a focus and approach that suggests he’ll be far more durable than most.

Maybe that sounds a little too optimistic. In any case, it’s hard to deny that the sport of cricket, and not just English cricket, has plenty of talent to enjoy for a long time to come.