Joe Root and Ben Stokes get new England era off to a flier... as Andrew Strauss closes in on appointing Jason Gillespie

England’s new order came to the rescue against New Zealand as supremo Andrew Strauss closed in on the appointment of Aussie Jason Gillespie as coach.

With the ECB’s director of cricket desperate to move on from the Kevin Pietersen affair, Joe Root and Ben Stokes both hit 90s and Jos Buttler 67 as England recovered from 30 for four to reach 354 for seven on a riveting opening day of the Investec Test series at Lord’s.

It was the perfect response to Strauss’s plea for ‘an England side people are proud of’. 

After watching Root and Stokes begin the fightback, Strauss left Lord’s at lunchtime for talks with Yorkshire coach Gillespie about replacing the sacked Peter Moores.

The discussions are believed to have gone well, with both sides increasingly confident that a deal can be done in time for Gillespie to take over for the upcoming Ashes series.

And Gillespie would have approved of the manner in which Stokes, who made a pair in his previous Test appearance at Lord’s against India last summer, helped Root mount a superb counterattack with a fifth-wicket stand of 161 in just 32 overs. 

‘The dressing-room was a bit quiet early on,’ said Stokes. ‘But the mood changed a bit between quarter to 12 and half past six. Now we need to try to get past 400 and knock over a few wickets with the new ball.’ 

‘Things couldn’t have gone any worse for me last year,’ said Stokes. ‘It’s nice to come back here and put in a performance for the team. And I enjoyed the responsibility of batting at No 6.

‘International cricket doesn’t always last as you want it to, so while I’m here I’ll try to play the way I want to play, and the way I do for Durham. Farby [interim coach Paul Farbrace] said just do what you do.’

Only the nature of Stokes’s demise – ushering an arm-ball from off-spinner Mark Craig on to his stumps when only eight runs short of a second Test hundred – took gloss off a day on which he confirmed himself as one of England’s brightest young lights.

England’s fightback coincided with Strauss’s plea for the country’s cricketers to make supporters proud after 18 months in which the game has stumbled from one mishap to another.

Strauss told Test Match Special: ‘There’s always a short-termism in terms of are you winning or not. But the bigger picture is getting people playing cricket and watching cricket.

‘We need an England team people are proud of, winning games consistently. Environment and culture are important – it’s about the kind of cricket we play and the way we hold ourselves. That will hopefully deliver a team over time that wins, and wins the right way.’

Strauss also promised to give England’s new coach ‘space to do the job’ amid concerns that he has already made several of the English game’s biggest decisions himself.