Scorecard<\/a><\/p>\nBen Stokes’ storied England career ended in a series defeat by New Zealand, who wrapped up the third and deciding Test on the final day in Nottingham.<\/p>\n
The day after captain Stokes announced this Test would be his last, England’s 160-run loss at Trent Bridge – and a 2-1 series reverse – highlighted the mess they now find themselves in.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the Stokes news on Sunday, England slumped to a self-inflicted 103-4 by the close of day four, leaving an inevitability about their chances of chasing 373 on Monday.<\/p>\n
And any sense of a prolonged fight was extinguished in the fourth over of the day, when Emilio Gay departed and, crucially, Joe Root was run out by an extraordinary direct hit from Henry Nicholls.<\/p>\n
Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson at least staved off humiliation with a battling stand of 75, ended when Atkinson was out just before lunch.<\/p>\n
Smith completed only his second half-century in 11 months, but Josh Tongue was the victim of another sublime New Zealand direct hit, this time by Mitchell Santner, before Smith was caught at long-off to leave England 212 all out.<\/p>\n
It means New Zealand, heavily depleted by injuries, have earned a famous series win, only their fourth in this country.<\/p>\n
The Black Caps were the last visiting team to win a series here, in 2021, and now they are the first tourists to win a series of three or more Tests in this country in 14 years.<\/p>\n
For Stokes, a four-year captaincy reign ends with his first home defeat, and a 15-year international career ends with England in chaos.<\/p>\n
This was their seventh defeat in nine Tests, and extends a run without a series win stretching back to 2024.<\/p>\n
In a congested calendar, England begin a white-ball series against India on Wednesday, but a swift return to action will not stop questions over whether further change to the management is required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Third Rothesay Test, Trent Bridge (day five of five) New Zealand 438 (Conway 157, Latham 151; Stokes 4-70)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-664422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}