ENGLAND put themselves into a commanding position to win the second Test and level the series at the Basin Reserve yesterday but the cautious way they went about adding 273 for nine spoke of a team still struggling to relocate its confidence. They had not won any of their previous seven Tests and only one of their last 16 overseas. It showed.

As if to show that they would have to scrap every inch to clinch a much-needed victory, James Anderson, their hero with the ball, freakishly turned his left ankle in a warm-down game of football after stumps. The ankle was immediately iced and he was able to put weight on it, but he left the ground on crutches.

The England camp played down the seriousness of the injury. There were no plans to scan an ankle on which Anderson lands during delivery. The England management used to ban football matches among players after a spate of injuries, but the practice has been dropped under Peter Moores.

Not until England's lead topped 350 did they seem to relax a little, and all that happened then was that they lost five wickets in the last 75 minutes of the day, four of them to the second new ball.

Before that, their progress was stilted as they built up their lead with apprehension rather than ambition. Chastened by totalling 81 in Galle before Christmas and 110 in Hamilton last week, and with a pre- tour instruction from the selectors to score more centuries still ringing in their ears, these were not batsmen in the mood for risk- taking.

The fact that two bowlers - and no batsmen - had been dropped after the horror of Hamilton might have weighed on their consciences too. At the very least they had to look like they were trying.

A long-awaited victory was put within reach - history would have to be made if their lead, worth 421 at stumps, was to be overhauled - but even on the toughest day for bowling in this match so far, centuries continued to elude the top six. There may not have been any clouds in the Wellington sky, but a sizeable one still hung over England's tremulous batting.

Alastair Cook, trouble by varied lines of attack, fell for a scratchy 60; Andrew Strauss, uneasy away from his opener's role, went for an even more hesitant 44; and Ian Bell was out for 41, his seventeenth dismissal between 40 and 99 in 35 Tests.

Once again, the savviest innings came from Paul Collingwood, whose measured 59 was his third half-century of the series and an object- lesson in mid-innings management. When he went in, England were teetering slightly at 160 for four, three wickets having fallen in quick order, and the situation needed stabilising.

Within minutes, he had very nearly done the opposite. In trying to hit Daniel Vettori over the top to get off the mark, he miscued grotesquely, high to deep mid-off, but fortunately the wind swirled enough to deceive Mark Gillespie, truly dizzy by the end of his effort.

This was one of three chances put down. Bell gave a half-chance to point on 12 and Cook was badly missed on five by Brendon McCullum, who palmed an edge that might have been taken by first slip. New Zealand's hard-working bowlers deserved better because they have never yet let England's batsmen assume control. An England win offers no guarantee of security.

The Australians, one suspects, would have gone about building on a lead of 144 much more aggressively. They would have aimed to break New Zealand spirits not just for the remainder of the game but for the next one in Napier.

But the England dressing-room seemed to treat each wicket as potentially the beginning of another collapse and reason for ultra-caution. As it happened, the biggest partnership of the day, worth 101 for the second wicket, was between Cook and Strauss, neither of whom seems capable of taking a lead when batting with the other - as we know from their indifferent time together as opening partners. They allowed Jacob Oram to bowl ten overs at them for nine runs.

England's run-rate in this series is dragging along at 2.5 per over, slower than all others since 2000 save for two tours of Sri Lanka. To get things moving, Kevin Pietersen needed to stay in. It was just the sort of situation in which he might have enjoyed playing the bully but unluckily, after announcing himself with two thunderous boundaries, he was run out at the non-striker's end via a deflection from the bowler's hand, the cruellest of dismissals.

Ironically, during a frisky passage following the early loss of Michael Vaughan, Cook hit his first six in any international. It wasn't the cleanest of hook shots and required TV replays to confirm that it had indeed cleared the rope. As he has ambitions to become a top-order biffer in one-day cricket, Cook will be mightily relieved to have finally broken his duck in his 49th match for England.

One suspects that only a victory, though, would release more tension in a lot of English bodies.