The backlash has been swift and predictable, but it shouldn’t steer England away from a blueprint that has allowed them to unleash genius from the get-go
Andrew Miller22-Jun-2023It was, as the Daily Star put it, “a real kick in the Bazballs”. England’s second defeat in three Tests was only fractionally less of a cliffhanger than their one-run loss in Wellington in February, but it was so much more of a tumble into the chasm.England’s gaunt faces at Edgbaston’s post-match presentation were in stark contrast to the mutually appreciative incredulity with which Ben Stokes’ men had congratulated New Zealand at the Basin Reserve four long months ago… James Anderson, of all the curmudgeonly competitors, even dared to be seen smiling on that occasion, after becoming Neil Wagner’s fourth and final victim of an indefatigable, deck-hitting fourth-innings display.And who knows, perhaps Wagner was the inspiration behind Stokes’ questionable but clear tactics to Australia’s tail on Tuesday evening, as he abandoned any pretence of conventional new-ball pressure on a sluggish surface, and goaded Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon into a mistake that never came.Related
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That final hour now feels like a seminal moment in the Bazball narrative – the first time in 15 outings that Stokes, England’s brilliantly ballsy captain, has been forced to blink first when the stakes have been at their highest. And so, a mere 24 hours after Stuart Broad had insisted his team was not “results-driven in any way, shape or form”, Stokes found himself admitting to being “beat up emotionally” by the events of that final day.The cognitive dissonance that that creates in a previously bulletproof philosophy will not have gone unnoticed as Australia, the reigning World Test Champions, now look towards Lord’s and a chance to taint the ethos further with subtly corrosive doubt. Are you sure you want to play that booming first-ball drive, Zak, or that ramp up over the slips, Joe? You want to declare on a featherbed with the world’s No.1 batter in overdrive? Sure, Stokesy … you do you.And as a consequence, it’s suddenly time for some Bazball real talk. Because, if this thrilling, intoxicating philosophy is to survive its first contact with the ancient and unimpeachable truths of the Ashes rivalry – and the death by a thousand hot takes that it can entail – then England urgently need to halt the frivolous narrative that has been allowed to spread like a pandemic in the hours since the loss, and unleash instead some overdue honesty about the tactic’s hard-nosed origins.For until they manage to do so, the mockery will be legion. “England have got carried away with Bazball and seem to think entertaining is more important than winning,” wrote Geoffrey Boycott in The Telegraph, while George Dobell – formerly of this parish – pointed out in The Cricketer that this was “not the primary school egg and spoon. It’s the Ashes”.Even the reliably trenchant Nasser Hussain, speaking on Sky Sports moments after the result, reminded viewers that England had not lost a home Ashes series since 2001 by playing “the old-fashioned way”, and that they “didn’t need ‘Bazball’ to beat Australia … You can’t hide behind [wanting to entertain].”But Bazball is not simply a happy-clappy means to “inspire a generation”, as per the ECB’s tagline, just as England’s World Cup win in 2019 was not designed to “boost participation levels”, even though that that was quite literally the second question put to Eoin Morgan as he sat on his plinth at Lord’s with the trophy gleaming beside him.Joe Root’s batting at Edgbaston was both carefree and thrillingly effective•Getty ImagesThe fact that it did was a pleasing by-product of that success, and similarly, the ECB owe Stokes’ men a separate debt of gratitude for playing in a style that has packed out the grounds and even drew a Sky Sports-record 2.1 million viewers for Edgbaston’s epic day five. And it’s gratifying to know that the players have a social conscience, particularly at a dicey time for English cricket when, with the impending publication of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) review, the game forever feels one press release away from being plunged back into crisis.But for the sake of the players’ credibility, and that of a tactic that – privately at least – will have earned more respect within the Australia dressing-room than they’ll ever need to declare in public, England now need to draw a line under the proselyting and the mission creep, and turn the focus back onto the madness at the heart of their method.For everyone loves a good origin story, and if properly expressed, Bazball’s could give Batman’s a run for his money. Forget for a moment the 24/7 laughter and the sight of Harry Brook bowling dobblers on the second morning of an Ashes series. At its core, Bazball is a cold-blooded self-preservation tactic that Brendon McCullum inadvertently hit upon in the midst of tragedy eight years ago, which in turn is quite possibly the reason why he has expressed such an active distaste for the term. To embrace it might draw attention to a time of his life that he’d much rather forget.New Zealand were midway through a Test match against Pakistan in Sharjah in November 2014 when news reached the squad of the tragic death of Phillip Hughes during a Sheffield Shield match in Sydney. The players lost all appetite for the game at hand, but the show had to go on – and so McCullum walked out to bat with a brain emptied of every care, and proceeded to smoke 202 from 188 balls.Somehow, amidst his grief, he bottled that unthinking mindset and, in passing it on through his team during a famously rampant autumn of his career, it was picked up on by his opponents too – not least a young Stokes, whose 85-ball hundred in the 2015 Lord’s Test against New Zealand remains the fastest ever scored at the old ground. And when, seven years later, the chance arose for the pair to work together as captain and coach, their alchemy was instant – not least because Stokes himself was emerging from his own well-documented mental turmoil, which included the death of his father from brain cancer in December 2020, the existential futility of playing on through Covid bio-bubbles, and the fears for his career after a badly broken finger at the 2021 IPL. The joy of the past 12 months, as expressed through the squad’s complete buy-in, has been the joy of release, and the unquestioning knowledge that nothing is better than having no cares in the world.The point of all this is that Bazball’s backstory (as Stokes and McCullum clearly won’t be calling it just yet) is as real and bleak as the prevailing narrative makes it out to be phony and frivolous, but the resulting strategy has already been proven to be the single best means for this particular group of players to achieve their potential. Instead of endlessly being bailed out by miracles – be it Stokes’ Headingley opus in 2019 or Root’s annus mirablis of 2021 – the team is now configured to unleash genius from the get-go. And while Stokes is right to acknowledge that “losing sucks”, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong to continue to be unafraid of losing per se.And yet, it was notable to how superficial McCullum was determined to keep his chat with the media after England’s Edgbaston defeat. He skimmed quickly through the personnel issues facing the side ahead of Lord’s, from Moeen Ali’s finger to Jonny Bairstow’s glovework, and though he reiterated his persistent belief that the team’s current ethos is the best way to win, his punchline once again was to digress into how entertained everyone had been this past week.He is well within his rights, of course, to remain implacable as he leans back on the balcony, feet up on the sofa, yawning while the drama plays out before him. But just as Trevor Bayliss, his similarly laid-back predecessor, was famously likened (by our friend George again) to a yucca plant and whale music for his focus on creating a good dressing-room ambience, so you suspect that McCullum will have to earn his corn this week – probably on a golf course somewhere remote, while England’s women fill the Ashes void during an important week of regrouping.Bazball has brought England victory in 11 of their 14 Tests in the McCullum-Stokes era•Getty ImagesBayliss’s most famous intervention during his time as head coach was to kibosh England’s victory celebrations in the semi-final of the World Cup, against Australia at Edgbaston no less, with a short sharp warning that they’d won nothing yet and if they carried on like this they’d finish the tournament with nothing too.You suspect McCullum’s intervention will be more subtle, more laidback, but it will need to be no less to the point. If you think this is bad, he might wish to remind his charges, just remember what true bleakness is like.True bleakness is bio-bubbles, true bleakness was the void of the last Ashes tour. True bleakness is not a narrow loss in front of a crowd in utter thrall of the spectacle you are putting on, but the treadmill existence that was endured during Covid, endlessly playing the same game with no adulation other than the dressing-room cheers that, to this day, remain England’s most important support structure – both in spite of, and more importantly because of, the very fervour their antics have whipped up.Poignantly, the final word on Bazball’s viability would surely have been delivered by the one man who would have loved it more than any other onlooker.When, in the latter years of his tragically all-too-short life, the late great Shane Warne turned his hand to poker to replicate the competitive thrill that had powered his mighty Test career, he used to talk of the need to project a table image, to ensure that – as often as possible – you were playing the man, not the cards, as the action unfolded in front of you.It’s counterinituitive in terms of conventional sporting strategy, but in poker terms, it’s designed to bypass the vagaries of luck that will inevitably clean your stack out every once in a while. If you keep making the right choices against the right opponents, in the manner that matches the hand you are representing, you will surely end up winning more than you will lose.It’s only under such conditions that Root, for instance, could correctly surmise that Pat Cummins’ opening gambit on day four of an Ashes series would be to hit that channel outside off, and therefore a pre-emptive reverse-ramp makes for an entirely logical and correct response. And only a captain who knows the nihilism at Bazball’s core could possibly declare at 393 for 8 after 78 overs on the opening day of the series – a move designed, as he said, to throw his opponents clean off their game.On this occasion, it did not work. But that’s not quite the same as it being a wrong option. For the sake of the rest of a now short-stacked series, Stokes has no option but to buy back in, and go again. Warnie, for one, would approve.