Launched in June 2022 at Lord’s under England’s new team leadership of captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum, the home when England successfully chased down 277 in the fourth innings against New Zealand, their ultra aggressive, go-getting brand of Test cricket has seen England storm their way to 14 Test wins since then.
However, the aggressive style of batsmanship, regardless of the situation or wicket, came under fire last week after England’s best batsman Joe Root reverse-scooped Jasprit Bumrah to Yashasvi Jaiswal at second slip on the morning of Day 3, helping India to come back into the game for good.
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Former India left-arm seamer Karsan Ghavri, who was at Rajkot to watch the match, felt that while ‘Bazball’ would work for England back home or in Australia, on turning pitches in India, it was a recipe for disaster.
“Bazball can be good on a pata (flat) wicket. On a turning track, it doesn’t work. Test cricket is a great test of your temperament, and your skill of grafting for runs. This type of cricket can be played in England and Australia. In India, on a turning pitch, it’s not possible to play like that, because every time, you won’t be able to middle the ball while playing your shots,” Ghavri told TOI.
He felt that the 28-run win in the first Test at Hyderabad lulled England into believing that the formula would succeed in India too.
“Once they won the first Test, they thought that they would be able to beat India with this brand of cricket. But, now, they’ll realize that on a turning track, it’s difficult to play shots. Here, you’ve to play a lot of the waiting game, which unfortunately England didn’t. You should look to take singles and doubles by placing the ball well, and take a boundary off a loose ball, like Jaiswal and Sarfaraz did at Rajkot. In a Test, if you play a dot ball, it’s fine,” Ghavri said.
“In the first innings, Stokes was playing beautifully, but what was the need for him to smash Jadeja into the hands of a fielder at deep mid-wicket, which Jadeja had especially kept for that shot? It shows that you are overconfident. One small mistake can cost you your wicket. For batsmen, it’s a oneball game,” Ghavri felt.
However, ‘Bazball’ still has its backers. “England should continue the ‘Bazball’ approach, because it’s testing the Indian players. If anything, they should be a little bit more calculated. So, play the reverse sweep when the pitch is turning on the third (and) fourth day, and on the first and second day, play the sweep shot. They got some of their calculations wrong there. But generally speaking, they should continue playing Bazball, because it’s entertaining, and keeps everyone really interested,” former England left-arm spinner Monty Panesar told TOI from London.
“The issue here is that you’re going to have heavy losses when they play like this. And when they do play in a positive manner, like we’ve seen in the first two Tests, it’s great, entertaining cricket,” he said.
We’ll turn the page and go quids in again trying to put India under pressure. Hopefully in seven or eight days we’ll be talking about how exciting it is to be heading into a decider. People are entitled to their opinion, good, bad or ugly. It’s up to us whether we want to listen to it or not. The dressing room is a very strong place where confidence is high, and guys are backed to go out there and allow their talent to flourish. If we allow the outside noise to seep in, that’s our problem. We’ve still got some progress to make and some things to improve on, but we’re a better team now than we were 18 months ago. We’re obviously not totally screwed down on the method yet. The upside is hopefully continuing to put bums on seats, make Test cricket more entertaining, we’ll win more often and we’ll be a team that people really want to follow.
Brendon McCullum to BBC
Rookie spinners struggling
The other issue plaguing England is the ordinary performance of their inexperienced spinners, apart from left-arm spinner Tom Hartley, who has taken 16 wickets in three Tests so far @33.18.
In the third Test, England’s spinners appeared to be cannon fodder for the likes of Jaiswal and Sarfaraz. “The quality of England’s spinners since the first Test hasn’t been great. Let’s be honest, and we’ve got to be fair here, these spinners haven’t got a lot of First-class experience. They’re learning on the job. Sometimes, Ben Stokes, in a very positive mindset, is backing his players, and that gets the best out of the spinners. But, if you haven’t played a lot of First-class cricket, there will be times when the spinners will get exposed. So, what will end up happening is that India will take advantage of that,” Panesar felt.
Panesar observed that India now know that they are capable of outclassing England, even if they are under pressure at some stage in the game.
“I think that India are beginning to feel that now, ‘Guys, we know the quality of their spinners. We know how they (England) are going to play. They’re going to be ultra-positive.’ When England had reduced India to 33/3 (on Day 1 of third Test), they should’ve bowled them out for 250. India now know that they just need one person to get a big hundred, one big partnership, in the first innings of a Test, and then they are very much on the top,” he felt.