Nathan Astle © Photosport

Nathan Astle wrote one of the greatest pages in New Zealand's Test cricket history today at his home ground Jade Stadium in Christchurch with an innings as powerful, audacious and innovative as anything seen before.

New Zealand might have lost the first Test of the National Bank series against England by 98 runs but the loss, after one of the more bumbling field displays of recent history, was tempered by Astle's achievements of a lifetime.

When the ninth wicket fell, Astle was on 134. He didn't know if Chris Cairns would be batting, and it was because Astle was playing so well that Cairns risked his knee injury by coming out to bat as the match took off and entered the realm of Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Astle had taken 18 runs off the first over bowled with the first new ball by Matthew Hoggard and then lost Ian Butler almost immediately.

But that was a mere appetiser for what followed. The runs off each over with the new ball tell their own story of the dazzling hitting display that carried New Zealand from 315/8 to 451. They were: 18, maiden, 23, 20, three, 25, six, one, 15, three, 15, one and six from the final three balls.

Astle hit the new ball onto the roof of the No 2 stand where it was lost. He hit the replacement ball onto the No 1 stand roof where it was also lost.

His 50 was scored off 54 balls, his 100 came 60 balls later, his 150 after another 22 balls and his 200 off just 17 more balls.

In partnership with Cairns they scored 50 off 24 balls, 100 off 31 balls and 118 off another 14 balls, or 118 runs off a total of 69 balls.

Astle's runs off each bowler were: Hoggard 90 off 60 balls, Andy Caddick 66 off 34 balls, Andrew Flintoff 43 off 32 and Ashley Giles 23 off 42.

Astle had 94 scoreless balls, 27 ones, seven twos, one three, 28 fours and 11 sixes.

He said afterwards that in all the time he had played cricket on this ground he had never hit the ball onto the roof before.

It was a day of milestones for Astle.

He hit a world record double century off 153 balls. He scored his second hundred off 39 balls.

He surpassed Martin Donnelly's innings of 206 as the highest score by a New Zealander against England.

He joined Donnelly, Bert Sutcliffe, Graham Dowling, Glenn Turner (two), Martin Crowe, Bryan Young and Mathew Sinclair (two) as Test double century makers.

When he passed 87 he became the seventh New Zealand batsman to score 3000 Test runs.

When he scored his eighth Test century, he moved into third on the all-time list of New Zealand century-makers behind Crowe (17) and John Wright (12).

Left behind on seven were: Bevan Congdon, Turner and Andrew Jones.

This season he has moved up from 13th place to sixth on the all-time New Zealand scoring Test and now has 3135 runs.

This followed his becoming the first New Zealander to score 5000 runs in ODIs and is easily the scorer of most ODI centuries for New Zealand with 12.

It is the highest individual innings in a loss, passing the 221 by Brian Lara for the West Indies against Sri Lanka at Colombo earlier this season.

This was the highest score by New Zealand in the fourth innings of a Test, passing the 440 scored at Trent Bridge in 1973.

Astle's time in reaching 200 in 217 minutes was only three minutes behind the time Don Bradman took to reach 200 en route to his world record score of 334 against England at Leeds in 1930.

Astle said he didn't really know what was behind why he should strike such a purple patch today of all days.

"I'll probably never play that way again. The biggest disappointment was dropping Thorpey [Graham] on four," he said.

It was when New Zealand got to 130 behind what was a world record target of 550, that Astle started to think a win might still be possible.

"We thought to ourselves, 'this could actually happen - it could be one of the great wins of all time.'"

It wasn't a win but it was the second highest run chase in history, the previous best being 654/5 when England needed 696 to win to beat South Africa in a timeless Test which was played over 10 days and ended only when the England team had to catch a boat.

Quite a day really, pity about the loss.

© CricInfo