Lunch England 141 and 31 for 1 (Crawley 9*, Pope 0*) need 246 runs to beat New Zealand 132 and 285 (Mitchell 108, Blundell 96)
There was to be another twist before the lunch break, however, when Alex Lees, who had looked in decent nick as he stroked four boundaries on his way to 20 from 32 balls, left a Kyle Jamieson delivery which nipped back to crash into the top of off stump. At the end of the morning session, Zak Crawley was unbeaten on 9 with Ollie Pope yet to score.
Despite the dreary prelude of a 30-minute delay to the start because of rain and general gloom, the match resumed its highly entertaining narrative as soon as the cloud cover gave way to bright skies. Mitchell and Blundell both resumed in the 90s, with their side 236 for 4, and Mitchell brought up his century off the first ball he faced, running three after driving Broad crisply through the covers.
Broad waved his arms furiously in a successful attempt to rev up the Lord’s crowd, which went wild when he ripped out Jamieson’s off stump to make it three New Zealand wickets to fall in as many balls and, all of a sudden, the tourists had gone from 251 for 4 to 251 for 7.
Potts struck with his second ball of the day, Ajaz Patel failing to overturn his lbw dismissal, and Parkinson claimed his maiden Test wicket when he looped the ball up outside off stump and Southee sent a catch to Joe Root at slip as the visitors were all out for 285.