Australia has comprehensively beaten England in both of the first two tests. It is clear that the problem is not that England under Bazball haven’t been good enough, rather Bazball itself has sabotaged their performances.
The strategy hasn’t just fallen short. It has been a major causal factor behind the batting collapses that have occurred after the team found itself in competitive positions in both tests. After the Perth test, England Captain Ben Stokes rightly pointed out that they had been on top of the game early on day two. What followed was a series of terrible dismissals, brought about by the kind of uncompromisingly impatient batting that defines Bazball. Defenders of the strategy might argue that if it had come off, then they would have put Australia away. The irony of this argument is that it is not really a defence of Bazball at all, rather it simply serves to highlight the fact that it hasn’t worked.
It’s unusual in test cricket for a team to lose primarily because of failed tactics. More commonly the better team wins because they are better, particularly over the duration of a test series. The tragedy in all this is that England have shown that their players have the ability to compete with Australia, and at times to outplay them. This is not the mismatch of talent that so often occurs in the Australian summer, when obviously weaker opponents come to these shores for an inevitable series defeat. The England team has weaknesses no doubt, but no more so than Australia, with its compromised bowling attack.
The main difference between the teams thus far has been the refusal of the England batters to play to the conditions, and to get themselves in before attempting to lift the scoring rate. Ollie Pope is the personification of the problem. A player of immense talent, but at the moment he is a walking wicket. It’s as though he’s not allowed to bat in a way that might allow him to survive long enough to feel comfortable and get himself in.
It’s an approach that at times stands in opposition to common sense. This point has been done to death by every analyst in every commentary box, but apparently no one in the England camp has noticed. Or more likely, the cult of Bazball has resulted in complete denial of what everyone else can see. Time after time, England batters have been out driving on the up to balls they should have left. Wild and completely unnecessary swings to balls well outside off stump resulting in catches behind the wicket. In amongst it there have been the more conventional dismissals, mostly at the hands of Starc, where they’ve been bowled or LBW to excellent deliveries. At least some amount of these kinds of wickets are inevitable at the highest level, and they can be accommodated if other batters in the line up are not throwing their wickets away to balls that should be left alone. But Bazball affords no such buffer. Bazball is born to be wild, firing all of its guns at once and exploding into space.
With the second test all but lost on day four in Brisbane, Stokes and Will Jacks embarked on a gritty partnership that was anathema to everything Bazball. In its obvious contrast with the Bazball orthodoxy, it seemed to confirm every criticism of the recklessness of the strategy. That it didn’t occur to Duckett, Brook, or Pope to bat this way underscores the essence of the problem.
It should be noted that the strategy did have significant initial success, and as has been well documented, it did turn around the fortunes of the team after a period of miserable results. England has played some great, and thoroughly entertaining cricket under this regime, not least of which in the excellent test series against India at home earlier this year. It is a strategy that has yielded results. The problem is not the innovation itself, but that the innovation has persisted beyond its usefulness. After initially freeing the England players, it has now locked the batters into methods that have made them more vulnerable than they should be.
On this tour where Bazball has exceeded the limit of its utility, there can be no doubt it has prevented a strong team from putting in a more competitive performance in the first two tests. Rob Key is a pragmatist, and he should understand this. If the England camp do abandon Bazball, it will be interesting to see Baz himself survives. At the very least he will need to adapt. McCullum bristles at the name ‘Bazball’, but at least part of the reason it has taken off is because it is so intrinsically linked to his psyche. He, Key, and Stokes should be commended for trying something new. Their stated aim of trying to play entertaining cricket for the fans who pay to watch is genuine, and it is praiseworthy, even if some of the attempts by players to explain it have been cringeworthy. At times it has appeared that something may have been lost in translation between the messaging at team meetings, and the subsequent statements by players reported in the press.
England’s batting coach Marcus Trescothick seems unaware or unwilling to acknowledge there’s a basic problem at play. Following the disastrous day three in Brisbane he told the press that after Perth… “no discussions took place about driving on the up…We are trying to play the way we want to play.” It’s just the latest in a series of reflexively defensive statements from the England camp, who increasingly seem to be drinking their own bath water. This us-against-the-world attitude is surely a reflection of the fact that the entire cricket world is united in its bewilderment about Bazball. Such attitudes suggest that a wholesale change of strategy might be unlikely without a wholesale change of personnel.
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