Brendon McCullum joked that he had spent the past four years dreaming of the time he would be unbeaten in the nineties in a Test match at Lord's. In 2004, he fell four short of a personal hundred, but he put any disappointment to one side as he reflected on the New Zealand fightback that centred around his run-a-ball 97 yesterday.

“It was pretty bittersweet again,” he said. “I am very proud to have stepped up under the circumstances, on a pretty dicey surface and moving up the order, to have helped us out of a bit of trouble.

“There was a chance at one point of being bowled out for 130 and if that had happened, only one side could have gone on to win.”

Perversely, the conditions helped McCullum to settle early on, no matter that he walked out with New Zealand on 41 for three. “It calmed me to think that I could be happy playing an ugly innings for a while,” he said. “I worked out in the first over that I may need a few to go past the edge and did not worry.”

On his own admission, an aggressive approach once he reached fifty would have left McCullum open to criticism had he not built a score. However, James Anderson admitted that bowlers are distracted by his movement at the crease. “We have plans for him, but it can be off-putting,” Anderson said.

McCullum believes that England are slightly ahead, but suggested that his own side could stretch their innings to 350 today. He said: “That would be a fantastic effort after losing the toss. It is hard to be excited on 208 for 6, but in the context it is pretty good. We can bowl with a lot of confidence and hold our own.”

Anderson thought that England bowled too short at times, but suggested that New Zealand recoveries may be the shape of things to come. “Their middle order is dangerous with [Jacob] Oram at No7 and [Daniel] Vettori at No 8. We must be wary if we take early wickets because we cannot expect to bowl them out cheaply,” he said.

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