Dylan Cleaver wraps up the miracle at the Basin.

This is an excerpt from Dylan Cleaver’s sports newsletter The Bounce. 

ENGLAND 435-8 dec & 256; NZ 209 & (f/o) 483

NZ win by 1 run

Test cricket, eh.

It was tempting to just write “Holy shit,” sign off and push the publish button, grab a cold one from the fridge and sit staring into the middle distance.

What’s the point in trying to intelligently summarise something you liked a lot but don’t really understand?

By the time I pointed the car north yesterday I had already stayed a day later than planned in the nation’s capital. By the time I got to Ohakea, I was pondering how much it would cost to hitch a lift back to Wellington on an NH90. It might have been worth it because I can tell you something for free: the western side of Lake Taupo is no place to follow the denouement of an epic test.

That it got to that point is one of the wonders of the sporting world.

New Zealand practically lost this test inside two days, being 138-7 in reply to England’s typically explosive 435-8 declared. Never has the word “practically” been asked to do so much work.

Even that third morning, when Tim Southee teed off in a way we haven’t seen in a long time, seemed merely ornamental – fool’s gold.

Instead it was the start of an inexplicable chain reaction.

Ben Stokes enforced the follow on and nobody can convince me that it made sense from either a statistical or vibe point of view. Teams who enforce the follow on have a win rate of 79 percent; teams who have the opportunity to but don’t enforce it have a win rate of 85 percent. That’s a small but significant difference, especially when one of your strike bowlers is 40, another is 36 and another has been dropped in the past for being too unfit for five-day cricket.

Even then there was no indication that New Zealand was about to flip the game in its head.

At Mount Maunganui the top feted three totalled 84 in the first innings and 17 in the second. At the Basin it was 39 in the first and… 276 in the second.

To deny James Anderson and Stuart Broad the early breakthroughs they usually feed off was critical, as was eclipsing the deficit with wickets in hand.

Tom Latham was excellent and Devon Conway was a mix of grit and glamour. Kane Williamson, well I haven’t any more to add that I didn’t say on Monday – pure batsmanship.

But even then New Zealand conspired to hand back the initiative, the tail folding crazily and meekly and the bowlers got sucked into the sort of frenetic start England were hoping for in their pursuit for 258.

Tim Southee and Matt Henry were excellent on the fifth morning, making the early inroads that were demanded, before the latter went down with what looked like a serious back injury.

England’s poor start was compounded by a run out of the in-form Harry Brook that might not have equalled Michael Bracewell’s for comic value but was in fact more crucial (in a karmic offering, it was Bracewell that effected Brook’s dismissal), Joe Root (95) decided to get serious and win the test in partnership with his captain.

It was ordained until a final, incomprehensible twist: Bazball succumbed to Wagnerball.

Brutalised in the second innings at Mount Maunganui and the first innings here, Wagner looked every bit the spent force as his short-ball tactics were used against him. While you could never make a strong case that he was the bowler of the series, he somehow ended with the most wickets (11), the best strike rate (wicket every 35.8 balls) and a serviceable average (33.9).

There’s a part of me that hopes that the final wicket is Wagner’s sign-off. It couldn’t be more apt: a grunt and a short ball followed by a maniacal, puce-faced celebration. To borrow an idea from another famous Wagner, it is his Gesamtkunstwerk – his “total work of art”.

There’s another part of me that feels that like all great divos he deserves a curtain call, but to what purpose?

This is where the romance dies, at least momentarily.

This was a brilliant win. According to Jacob Oram on the wireless, it is New Zealand’s greatest test victory. It might well be, or it might just be their most dramatic. Either way, it doesn’t really matter.

What it can’t be is a coat of paint on a leaky home.

If James Anderson gets a millimetre more wood on that ball New Zealand fall to 0-2 and without a win since the first test against South Africa last season. As it is, they haven’t had a series win in their last six.

They have done that with a team of over-30s. The only sensible conclusion you can make is this iteration of the test team has peaked and is sliding. Yes, it has enough world-class players to remain competitive and sometimes spectacular but it is far closer than the end of an era than the middle.

So without wanting to dampen the mood, there should be a checklist.

They need to get better at identifying, developing and, in exceptional cases, fast-tracking young players.

They must invest in spin (it’s even more gobsmacking that they won a test by bowling a side out cheaply on the fifth day without a wicket from a spinner). The difference between England’s commitment to Jack Leach and New Zealand’s lack of commitment to a specialist spinner has been stark.

They must get even more nimble and innovative around their approach to central contracting. God knows how, but that’s an imperative for New Zealand Cricket and the Players’ Association.

But, most importantly of all, they must first toast this absurd test and their role in history.

Only four teams have won following on, the first in 1894. They made the second into a documentary video, Botham’s Ashes, and the third, India’s victory over Australia at Eden Gardens is so iconic that VVS Laxman’s 281 is often referenced as the greatest innings of all time.

This one deserves to be immortalised. Get that final image of Wagner mobbed by his teammates down to Te Papa – or at least to the walls of the very fine Cricket Museum at the Basin – immediately.