The full toss from Kyle Jamieson for his first ball in Test cricket, bunted through backward point for his first runs. Even the dismissal from the same bowler moments later for 8 - a pearler that swung in and took the edge as it decked away - that he could do nothing about. The edge, on 20 in his second go, low and beyond Daryl Mitchell at first slip. Soon followed by the unreviewed "not out" decision given to him on 24 by standing umpire Adrian Holdstock.
Emilio Gay has enjoyed some good fortune in what little there has been of his England Test debut. Fortune he did not waste.
An over after Tom Latham declined to review, the left-hander unfurled the shot of the match: a stylish cover drive off Will O'Rourke that had Lord's purring. Feeling himself on 41, a guide through a vacant third slip was accompanied immediately by soft hands for back-to-back boundaries down to third. A tuck for two into square leg brought him a maiden half-century from 84 deliveries, then a salute to his parents in the Mound Stand. Celebrations extended into his next delivery with a bit of class through midwicket for an eighth and final boundary.
Dismissed for 57 - another angled-in delivery from around the wicket that left him late, this time from Nathan Smith - he currently owns the highest score after three-and-a-bit innings of this Test that is heading England's way.
You can't really begrudge fortune, can you? Especially on a pitch that has treated England and New Zealand with more disdain than if they had stolen the 143-year-old Ashes urn out of the on-site museum and took turns doing tequila shots out of it. In a sport that gives you plenty of reasons to despise it, and a format where those reasons compound over five days (usually anyway), let them have luck.
The best to ever do it have benefitted from the sunnier side of fate. But cricket still just about exists in that sporting ether where the harder one practises, the luckier they get. That Gay has a reputation on the domestic circuit as one of the hardest trainers going counts for something.
It is a trait he has taken on from his idol, the late Kobe Bryant. The NBA hall-of-famer's 4am sessions were the stuff of legend. Even after retirement in 2016, active stars would hit him up to train, and often found themselves lagging behind.
Coming through the academy at Northamptonshire, Gay was so hellbent on making it to the top that he did, occasionally, rub people up the wrong way. Some of those same people will also be the first to tell you his desire was like no other, and there is little surprise at Wantage Road, Chester-le-Street (where has been since the start of 2025) or at Bedford School, that he has made it to the top.
High volume, intense sessions are the norm, with no ball wasted. He studies opposition bowlers, using bowling machines, teammates and coaches to replicate every possible angle, every potential line of attack. After three days training with the England squad at Loughborough last week, supplemented by two more days at Durham, he brushed up on the Black Caps attack, including reacquainting himself with Matt Henry, who dismissed him twice when playing for Somerset last season.
Gay admitted training with England had been "a step up" from even his routine. But the management were impressed by his endeavour in those sessions, and the seriousness he has brought to the group while maintaining a chilled, amiable disposition. It was probably no coincidence that head coach Brendon McCullum, on the eve of the match, told Gay he was ready during a meeting with the batters on the Lord's outfield, clearly looking to ease the 26-year old's nerves.
As it happens, Gay's pre-match routine meant he was a little late for his cap presentation on Thursday. His parents and family were in the huddle as Sir Alastair Cook - a Bedford School alumni and occasional advisor to Gay - presented cap number 720.
"I could also say, [you are] probably the first person from Bedford School to ever score runs in front of square," Cook joked. As much a self-deprecating dig at his own method as a nod to Gay's penchant for a drive to swoon for. While there have been a few, this knock was straight out of Cook's playbook.
"I think it necessarily wasn't a case of trying to score as quickly as we could," Gay said. "But in a low-scoring game, little 20-run partnerships here and there were crucial. Even if I soaked up 30 balls and maybe got 10, I saw that as a bit of a win."
There was a bit of Kobe about Gay lamenting his demise, the first of four dismissals for just a single run in 11 balls. All of Harry Brook, Joe Root and captain Ben Stokes returned to the pavilion in the time it would have taken Gay to change into his training gear.
"I felt like that was a real shift in momentum, when I got out," he rued. "The clouds were coming over, the lights were on and that gave them [New Zealand] a little bit of a boost and that was disappointing."
A vital 57-run stand from 76 deliveries between Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson moved New Zealand's total from possible to improbable. A continuation of Gay's hard work but also, like Gay, their own.
Smith returned home from the Ashes broken, especially technically. An undesirable quirk of hands and hips re-emerged from early in his career to blight him in Australia. Unable to effectively access the ball, thus making him more susceptible to straight deliveries, he was capped at just 211 runs at an average of 23.44.
Together with his personal batting coach, former Test batter Mark Stoneman, he worked to iron out those kinks, from pre-season to the weeks leading up to this Test. Though his judgement looked off on day one when leaving a Jamieson delivery that clattered his off stump, a crisper bat path from a more square-on stance forged a valuable 39, before a scuttler did for him as it had done for Jacob Bethell.
Ollie Robinson, fresh from marking his return to the Test side with a fourth five-wicket haul, scrambled 29, as the last batter to fall, to bump the target up to 254. Wicketless on Friday evening as Atkinson and Josh Tongue shared the three to fall, Robinson will undoubtedly have a say on Saturday. Then, really, will be his opportunity to showcase the shift he has put in to take his fitness to the levels desired by Stokes from a leader of his bowling attack.
We are only two days into this third iteration of Stokes and McCullum's England, but this day of graft should be noted.
It was only this winter that Ben Duckett arrived unfit and was sent to Perth early to work on his fitness ahead of the Ashes. That same Ashes in which Smith was discouraged from further grind in the nets between matches, albeit motivated by the management fearing he may simply go down an unhelpful wormhole rather than find the necessary remedies that now satiate him. Just two months ago, Liam Livingstone and Ben Foakes told their own stories of a regime that made them feel like they cared too much.
The crapshoot nature of this surface means firm statements are as precarious as going back to length balls. Does Gay have what it takes to succeed? Are Smith's issues behind him? Is Robinson back for good? And the biggest question of them all - have England changed?
Who knows. What is for certain is hard work, works.