Brendon McCullum has been relieved of his duties as England’s red ball head coach, which officially marks the death of Bazball, exactly four years after its inception.
This sacking has come roughly a fortnight after Ben Stokes abruptly and dramatically announced his retirement from international cricket, mid-spell in a Test series decider against New Zealand at Trent Bridge.
It is quite ironic that the Bazball tenure was bookended between two home Test series against New Zealand with contrasting results, as Stokes lit the building on fire on his way out. It was an implosion of catastrophic proportions that perfectly sums up the hullabaloo which was the Stokes-McCullum partnership, at the helm of Test cricket affairs in England.
Two characters who everyone knew would run through a brick wall for their team but would also create a brick wall to run through when one did not exist.
“We will live forever in the memory of people who were lucky enough to witness us play cricket”
This Ben Stokes quote came in the direct aftermath of England’s failure to win the Ashes in 2023 on home turf, and it is etched in both blood and beer, on the Bazball tombstone.
In a world of dogmatic statements, which were aplenty in the Bazball camp, this is not even the most outlandish one, but it is definitely the most fitting. We have of course seen Ollie Robinson downplaying the importance of winning, Ben Duckett taking credit for Yashasvi Jaiswal’s double hundred, and Harry Brook claiming the moral Ashes, to name a few.
The emphasis on entertainment and saving Test cricket was at the absolute forefront of the Bazball cult, so much so that it overshadowed all the strategic innovation that came with it.
High intent Test batters had existed well before the Bazballers, but never before had a Test unit attacked en masse like they did. Scoring rates in the format hit record highs, and England, who had won a solitary Test in 17 attempts prior to the Bazball phenomenon, lost just one game out of 11 after Stokes and McCullum took over the reins.
In 2021, England’s third highest run-scorer in Tests were extras, and a year later they had assembled a batting lineup which could chase down totals touching 400 for fun. This stark improvement was dubbed as a revolution, and deservedly so, for it was a turnaround that merited recognition.
The honey badger is widely considered as one of the most aggressive, fearless, and relentless animals in the world. Thick skinned with a fierce attitude, it was exactly the kind of mammal that Stokes and McCullum wanted England’s Test team to emulate.
Ultra-aggressive batting had elevated the fortunes of England’s white ball teams, who were at the time holders of both ODI and T20 World Cups. Their batting resources were overflowing with impetus and hitting prowess, and so it only made sense to employ the same approach in the longest format.
Test cricket, however, is a grueling sport that requires the understanding of gears. Batters need to shift those gears optimally, bearing in mind both the playing conditions and phase of the game, to yield success. England’s team of honey badgers, with their toes jammed hard on the accelerator, driving recklessly in sixth gear throughout, were bound to crash and burn.
It would be unfair to Bazball as a method, if observers limit its scope to swinging for the hills with bat in hand. Yes, high octane batsmanship was a big part of it, but so were funky field settings, batting outside of the popping crease, bouncer barrages, and ambitious declarations.
The umbrella field that trapped an in-form Usman Khawaja in the 2023 Ashes sticks out in memory, but in truth, Ben Stokes the skipper had made a habit of manufacturing dismissals through tweaking his field settings. It was a regular feature of his captaincy, but like most things in the Bazball era, he spammed the tactic well beyond necessity. Sometimes all you need is patience with field placements that are working, but Ben Stokes showed none of it.
The same is true for all those bouncers bowled, when it made more sense to attack the stumps on certain pitches. Even Neil Wagner would have looked away during England’s needless short ball marathons in the Ashes humiliation Down Under.
Eventually, opposition teams started to work out English batters, bowling pace with the wicketkeeper standing up to the stumps. This proved to be fatal for all those Bazballers who were used to batting outside their crease. Harry Brook got pinned like an amateur wrestler trying to take down the Undertaker.
Radical methods can be groundbreaking and beneficial but being married to those methods even after being found out by your opponent, is nothing short of suicidal.
And then we have the declarations. When England declared in Rawalpindi on a placid track in the early days of Bazball, it was hailed as a masterstroke. They swept Pakistan 3-0 in their own backyard on surfaces which were anything but result-oriented, barring Multan. Stokes famously dangled the carrot in front of Babar’s men, who took the bait and further inflated the rapidly increasing Bazball stock.
Winning away from home in Test cricket is always a feat worth celebrating and forcing results on decks so benign that they could cure cancer, is even more impressive.
On the other hand, declarations made in haste, where time was not of the essence, are disrespectful to the format itself.
The Rawalpindi blueprint was not at all applicable in Wellington or Birmingham, with two wickets in hand and a certain Joe Root unbeaten on the crease, having reached triple figures on both occasions.
England lost by 1 run at the Basin Reserve to New Zealand, and by 2 wickets at Edgbaston to Australia in the opening Test of the Ashes. Both series were ultimately drawn and would have been won if not for those absurd declarations. There is a difference between dangling the carrot and dicing it up for your opponents to munch on easily.
Yet another example of Stokes and McCullum being hell bent on their out-of-the-box chess moves, when all they really needed to do was look inside the box every now and then. They simply did not believe in contingency plans and chose not to re-evaluate on the go. Learning and improvement were nowhere to be found, ever. Acceptance of mistakes made was also negligible.
Fans are most certainly not entertained when victories well within grasp are squandered, or when they are subject to prolonged mediocrity, with all the media talk by their team serving as a direct insult to their intellect. At the end of the day, results matter most in Test cricket. Points on the line, and all that.
England’s prerogative though, was never about winning Test matches in this period of Bazball. If it wasn’t about entertaining crowds and playing savior by resuscitating the format, it was about winning the Ashes in Australia. Until it was not, as per Jeetan Patel. Fans and media alike were left with the punchline that England had in fact overprepared for the Ashes.
To be fair to the Bazballers, this fixation on the Ashes as the be-all and end-all of Test cricket is seemingly a symptom of being English. Even the advent of the World Test Championship, a competition that England have simply denied to acknowledge, could do nothing to shake their unwavering Ashes obsession.
James Anderson, a 700-wicket Test veteran, still doing bits at the highest level, was forcefully made to retire by Stokes, McCullum and Rob Key. The rationale presented to both Jimmy and the public was that preparation for the away Ashes series was paramount, and bowlers who could hit the deck hard and crank up their pace would be preferred.
This turned out to be a grave miscalculation by England’s leadership group, as the conditions in Australia suited metronomic bowlers who could nip the ball off the deck in either direction. Scott Boland and Michael Neser wreaked havoc for Australia, as Brydon Carse routinely wasted the new cherry for England.
Not only did they deprive themselves of the greatest exponent of wobble seam bowling in history, they also ditched the classic English seamer prototype altogether, with no specialist available to open the bowling. Not a single fast bowler in England’s ranks could pepper a length, unless that length was short and wide.
Other selection calls were also questionable. Shoaib Bashir, a right arm finger spinner who was not first choice at Somerset, was drafted into the team due to his high release point. Jamie Smith, who is a more than capable batter, but not a regular glovesman, was selected to keep wicket.
Bashir did not feature in a single Ashes Test in Australia, and not only did Smith flunk with the bat, he also fumbled behind the stumps and dropped catches.
Everyone dropped catches, which came as no surprise considering how England did not have the services of a fielding coach. Who has time for fielding drills anyway.
And so, the cult of Bazball became extremely difficult to sell after what was a nightmarish tour of Australia, and England’s off-field blunders only made matters worse.
It is impossible to talk about Bazball without mentioning golf, whiskey, cigars, and nights out that had gone incredibly wrong. Test series in India and Australia are undoubtedly the biggest assignments for England’s cricketers, who in response were vacationing in the UAE and Noosa, mid-tour.
Curfews were imposed when Rob Key pretended to be unaware of England’s drinking problem, which were then immediately broken. Modern research suggests that excessive consumption of alcohol can be detrimental to professional athletes, and all human beings. The Bazball lads were not only determined to excessively party, but to do so in public, giving media houses headline after headline.
What is damning is that there was no real ownership of these scandals, and ECB top dogs continued to enable this problematic behavior. Getting wrecked and side-stepping the consequences became a Bazball-centric theme, top to bottom.
England under Stokes and McCullum failed to win Test series against both India and Australia, drawing at home and getting hammered away, even gifting a home series to a declining New Zealand team at the very end.
Their woes against spin bowling are well documented, which came to the fore most notably on their second tour of Pakistan. Also, their tactical rigidity made them inept to adapt and even encouraged the curation of tracks flatter than highways on English soil.
What is remarkable is that England’s Test team in its current state is equally bad, if not worse, when compared to the team that Stokes and McCullum inherited. Four long years and apparent deterioration in health is a terrible account of what went down.
The relationships between Key, McCullum and Stokes quite evidently became fraught after the sepulchrous Ashes tour, but all three retained their jobs, with zero accountability. It took a broken curfew and some punches thrown at a nightclub to finally bring an end to this untenable mess.
Rob is the only individual who remains in power from this ill-fated troika, but if English cricket is the lock, he definitely does not seem to hold the Key.
What happens hereon is anyone’s guess, given the chaotic nature of English cricket in recent times, but the task at hand for Stokes and McCullum’s successors is cut out for them. Whoever they may be, all they really need to do is take the good parts of Bazball that worked and build on them by making smart decisions on and off the field.
In the last few years, brains were at a premium in England’s Test side, and the upcoming rebuild will require lots of them. Going back to being boring and defeatist will not help, neither will dying on a hill like poster boys Stokes and McCullum be of any use. An educated reset is the need of the hour.
As for Bazball, despite being a failed exercise for England, it has still left its mark on Test cricket. It encouraged other teams to bat faster, and captains to think outside the box as well. It is still revolutionary as a concept, and if deployed properly, can still be successful and sustainable.
On entertainment value alone, nothing comes close to Bazball, and putting pressure right back on your opponent is still the direction in which Test cricket is heading. Upping the volatility is without doubt the new normal. It only needs to be coupled with a bucket load of intelligence, figuring out when to put your foot on the gas, and when to weather the storm, prioritizing victory as the one true goal. You do not need to go full honey badger to achieve that.
It has to be said though that Stokes was right when he spoke about the Bazballers living forever in the memories of those who watched them play. For better or for worse, whether they triumphed or fell flat on their faces, everyone was watching, always, and talked about them incessantly. Even if they are remembered in jest, they will never be forgotten.
And if you really think about it, attritional batting is close to non-existent today. Teams are more likely to chase down 400 in the fourth innings as opposed to surviving on the fifth day of a Test which is all but lost.
So, whether you like it or not, Test cricket will never be the same after the Bazball chapter. It is likely that some future regime across the many cricket playing nations will opt to play Tests in a similar but modified mold.
All we can hope for is that dressing room talks remain in the dressing rooms of those teams, and leaders take responsibility if and when plans go awry, learning from their errors along the way.
Get the latest sports news, match updates, and player stories wherever you prefer.
Add ProPakistani to Preferred Sources and see more of our stories in Google Search and Top Stories.
Cricket Correspondent and Podcaster with ProSports and Good Areas
Shares
