Edwards graduates in school of knocks

England employed a combination of experience and youth yesterday in reply to New Zealand's first innings total of 362 for five declared and, as the 37-year-old Jan Brittin and 16-year-old Charlotte Edwards put on 63 for the first wicket, experience had to doff its cap to the confidence of youth.

Edwards, given the responsibility of opening for her country on her Test debut, could be excused the overnight nerves to which she confessed. Not that the farmer's daughter from Pidley, in Huntingdonshire, let them show. Having taken a summary look at the bowling, she leant into the third ball she faced and drove it into the covers for two runs.

The openers spanned the spectrum of experience as England's youngest ever Test player walked out with the most capped. This is Brittin's 76th appearance for England - her 24th in Tests - and she came into the match needing another 172 to equal the world Test record of 1,594 runs held by the former England captain, Rachael Heyhoe-Flint. The way she started, watchful and determined, gave every indication that she intended getting them, and she couldn't have found a better place than the Woodbridge Road ground.

Even before the impressive New Zealanders piled on the runs on Friday, their captain, Sarah Illingworth, described the pitch as "rolled concrete". Her seam bowlers weren't exactly jumping for joy at the prospect of bowling on it and by lunch the off-spinner Catherine Campbell was well into a 22-over stint.

In contrast to the helmet-and-grill protection worn by Brittin, Edwards wore her blue England cap with a matching blue band holding her hair in a pony tail. Seen later in the day with ice-cream smudges on her cheek, she looked very much aschoolgirl who is awaiting her GCSE results, but at the crease she was every inch the cricketer her father has coached her to be.

Predominantly a front-foot player, she leant into her strokes with an elegance that eased the ball past point or into the covers. When she was out leg-before to Kelly Brown for 34, to a ball that kept low, it was the only time she had played back.

By lunch this was England's only loss, and Brittin and Barbara Daniels had taken the score to 108. All morning the runs had come as regularly as the trains rolling along the embankment at the far end of the ground, but after the interval Brittin suffered from signal failure. In an hour she added just seven runs to her morning's fifty, and England, needing 213 to avoid the follow-on, lost momentum. Indeed there was a dash of desperation in the way she clumped Campbell's full toss to wide mid-on.

The intervals did England no favours. Second ball after lunch Daniels was stumped off Campbell. Second ball after tea the England captain, Karen Smithies, was stumped off Justine Fryer and in the same over the flighty New Zealand left-arm spinner bowled Jane Smit, leaving England 34 short of clearing the follow-on hurdle with their top order gone. However, some judicious hitting in Kathryn Leng's 31 saw England pass that target and lengthened the odds against New Zealand gaining their first win over England to take the three-match series.