In the end it didn’t matter whether England won or lost the Edgbaston Test. Importantly, they began the Ashes as they had been playing for the last year or so, embedding ‘Bazball’ deeper into the lexicon of the game. They stuck to their new philosophy. They ran towards the danger in the evocative words of skipper Ben Stokes.
Bazball is as much about batting attractively as bowling with purpose. Other countries have played similar cricket, but not with such consistency and not with such a passion. Test cricket needs this to remain above white ball formats as the finest expression of the sport. Other coaches, and other countries ought to be influenced now. There will be the occasional loss, but it makes for great viewing.
Meet fire with fire
Bazball is fun, attractive, stimulating, challenging — and you can add to that list. It is an approach to playing cricket, and is startling only because it is being employed at the highest level by England. Australia tried countering it in the early part of the Edgbaston Test by going in the opposite direction — with a version of grim, defensive cricket. But fire needs to be met with fire.
Sometimes Bazball can be confusing; the argument perhaps is that if it is confusing to the opposition, then it doesn’t matter if it is also confusing to commentators and columnists too. Bazball might have upset the internal logic of cricket, but that assumes any sport has an internal logic. What ‘internal logic’ means is convention; Bazball upsets the conventions of cricket.
Usually in sport, the coach adapts a style to suit the players available, not the other way around. England’s coach Brendon McCullum and Stokes first decided what their style would be and then got the players on board. Virtually the same team that won just one of seventeen Tests under Joe Root previously began by winning 11 of 13 Tests.
It is a style that by its nature tends to irritate the opposition. Players are patently having fun, laughing and smiling on the field. They make the opposition look like old-fashioned plodders, a little too keen on winning and willing to do whatever it takes to put it across the Bazballers.
Stokes, seen as a combination of Mike Brearley and Rowan Atkinson, intellectual and funster, stands tall. He calculates (probably not consciously, but in effect) that when he does something apparently silly and it pays off, then the successes are remembered more than the failures.
Who else would have asked a 36-year-old off spinner who retired from Tests two years ago to reconnect with his flannels? Moeen Ali bowled 33 overs, more than any other England bowler in the first innings, and dismissed two top players. He wasn’t an unqualified success then and might have to dip his bowling finger in a bucket of urine for its callous, just like a predecessor Graeme Swann claimed to have done. But no player was likely to give up a chance to be part of a revolution.
Innovative
Who else would have declared at 393 in the first innings, with his best batsman, and centurion Joe Root at the crease? Who else would have had a field like that to Usman Khawaja, a sort of inverted slip cordon or out-of-shape umbrella? It looked ridiculous till it achieved its aim — Khawaja inner-edging onto the stumps. The Australian firstclass player Keith Carmody is credited with inventing the umbrella field, sometimes called the Carmody field in Australia. Perhaps Stokes needs to have his name stamped on the reverse umbrella field — and on some others too!
Genius or gambler? Great captains have a bit of both in them, although the proportions vary. Brearley was closer to genius, Mahendra Singh Dhoni closer to the other. The only justification in sport is success. Dhoni’s biggest gamble, giving the ball to Joginder Sharma in the final over of the 2007 T20 World Cup, paid off handsomely. When that happens, the gamblers are considered geniuses!
The beauty of Bazball is its clarity among the players — no confusion there. Each one knows his role, knows the limit and its extension, and everyone plays for the captain. Would a lesser captain who plays by the book be as inspiring? It is not a perfect system — any perfect system will quickly become boring — yet Bazball continues to show the path. It will have its critics, but England are laughing all the way into history.