A Bazball health check - is everything as it appears?

[sussexpob]

Anyone tuning into this summer's series with a mere passing interest in cricket, would be left with the impression that England are midway through a period of sustained, generational levels of success, judging purely on the way that the English media and commentators talk about the side. It is seemingly now accepted as universal truth that England's fortunes continue on a constant upwards trajectory, carried on the back of inspirational and revolutionary blueprint that is re-inventing the game itself as it goes. As Stuart Broad concluded at the Oval yesterday, "England have answered all the questions".

Hearing Broad's word's echoing in my head, I was confused as to whether or not I had fallen asleep at midday and had day-dreamed the last hour or so of my life. I thought I had witnessed England lose a test, and with it had failed to win the series. It felt a bizarre conclusion to draw after a series England failed to win the majority of matches, that there was no questions to be answered, nothing to critique, nothing to improve - perfection, it seems, has been re-defined to mean a 40% success rate. By the evening, I found myself flicking through social media, and stumbled upon a popular Aussie cricket podcast where a confused presenter asked the question "Are England gaslighting us into believing they are world class side"??? I feel inclined to ask myself the exact same question.

For all the talk of success and improvement, the cold, hard fact is England have now not won any of their marquee series against the top sides they have played in the Bazball era. The ECB are not exactly secretive about their top priorities for test cricket, the future tours program has been shaped purposefully and openly to play more series against sides that they deem worthwhile, and to cut those they do not really care about. Against the Big "3", the only teams that now get more than a 3 match series, England have not won a series in three attempts. And then for teams that have been given multiple tours in this cycle of the future tours program, we lost to Pakistan in the last series, and only beat NZ - although in a 2 match series in the latter case, which in history tends to throw out the most random results. Wins against SL, WIN, ZIM and IRE can adequately summed up in importance on the fact the ECB have not scheduled a tour to these countries at all in the FTP; it will be a bare minimum gap of 8. 9 and 31 years respectively between the last time we toured these countries, with England never playing scheduling a game in Ireland in 10 years they have held test status. Home wins against these teams are almost meaningless in defining the status or legacy of the side, or meeting any top priorities the side sets itself.

We can put these results into context also. England's 4-1 battering in India was made to look all the worse for the fact that NZ flogged the same side not long after, exposing the team for what it was - a team in a significant decline losing bags of players to retirement. The India team that travelled to England was one in deep transition, with a rookie captain and heaps of inexperienced players. And yet, it went toe to toe with England's apparent world class side and got a result, in a country where some of India's legendary line ups have been annihilated. It's not hard to see that something is wrong with the narrative - world class teams at home don't fail to beat their top opponents at their low points. They don't get annihilated away after their opponent has 6 of their retire, 1 nearly die in a car crash, and the best bowler in the world unable to play every game. India were ripe to be beaten by a world class side - instead, they won the series aggregate 6-3! We have to see these top series not being won as a failure, and far from Broad's take that England are answering all the questions thrown at them, we need to ask why this is the case?

Before answering those questions, its necessary for me to say that I am generally supportive of Bazball. I understand that coming after the best part of a decade of abject batting failure, McCullum and Stokes have found a way to get more output from the team by being positive. Where defensive techniques fail, aggression can prosper in forcing bowlers to retreat under a barrage of boundaries and put them on the back foot, and its a pure question of trying to increase the efficiency of each of your component parts. Nevertheless, it is a blueprint that needs to adapt in order to mature into a successful plan for beating world class sides. There is a reason after all we haven't won these marquee series - we cannot just accept the games we lose are not caused by anything.

Here we stumble the fundamental issue with Bazball doctrine. As the crowd were filing out the Oval yesterday after India's victory, Brendan McCullum was invited during his post-series interview to give his opinion on what went wrong. He said that he felt after the Brook and Root partnership on day 4, England had not been brave enough to back themselves - Brook got out charging a ball and swing the bat so hard, it ended 10 meters above his head. Bethell charged down the pitch and attempted to baseball a bowler in the high 80s into the stratosphere and was bowled. Jamie Smith similarly charged down the pitch and could do nothing but deflect one to the keeper, and Joe Root made an uncharacteristic slash at a wide one. It seems a quite bizarre conclusion to say that in these moments, England were not brave enough to go all in on their bazballing - it would be like an Army officer bemoaning his troops cowardice after they strapped bombs to themselves and threw themselves into enemy foxholes to blow them up. Insinuating the cricket we played lacked bravery could not have been a more dull conclusion to make.

But this is where we find ourselves, the trotting out of the usual "following the process" nonsense that has been inherited from the Mo Bobat era. There is something deeply problematic about a team that refuses to ever admit to itself that its methods are not perfect. That is the whole point of the "following the process" mantra - if we fail, its not the plan that is wrong, its the fact we just didn't execute the plan well enough. When we ask ourselves why after 4 summers and nearly 50 test matches, Bazball seemingly never learns from its mistakes or reaches a new level of tactical maturity - well, its because Bazball thinks its infallible. The way failure is assessed does not invite any level of scrutiny as to the method, only its application - the depressing reality is, it does not want to change and will make no attempt to do so.

Nothing illustrates this more than the 2nd test. On a still flat pitch, a draw was still very much in play, and very much possible. Drawing, however, is not in the vocabulary, it is not following the process. And so England came out and tried to firebomb their way 600 plus in 100 overs, and lost the game. On Day 4, after England had slogged and lost the top three in less than 10 overs, it was left to Marcus Trescothick to face up to the media on behalf of the team and bizarrely muse "maybe we can't win the game now". No sh*t Marcus, thanks for that wonderful insight. For all the "we don't do draws", the irony is that failing to draw that test ended up meaning we did not win the series. India in contrast batted the best part of 2 days to save a test, a result that saved the series from a loss. Not only was it counter-productive, but even in the context of their desire to win on all accounts, does not add up. Success is measured in series victories - the battle is meaningless if you do not win the war.

Instances like the one in Birmingham also point towards a general attitude of the side and its management. One gets the feeling that, buoyed by a gushingly positive press, that the side are becoming high on their own supply. McCullum's take on the aforementioned second test was to say that England didn't need to bat like other teams, as if all the accepted institutional knowledge built through the history of the game pales in comparison to his subjective opinion, and that batting out draws that win you series are subordinate to stylistic choices. And that is before we get round to all the nonsense they spout about saving the game with their style, being the ultimate entertainers, or being the guardian's of the spirit of the game. There is a level of sanctimonious arrogance to all this which is palpably unlikable, even before we get round to the fact its a standard that England cannot live up to. While Stuart Broad trawls the podcasts on behalf of the team to brag about how he saved the spirit of the games future by bawling obscenities at those cheating Australian fielders after the Bairstow incident, egged on by Stokes, we then get the embarrassing time wasting, the crap over rates, the shambles of the OT test and the entitlement of not getting your own way. Its all smiles and spirit until it goes wrong, and then it becomes child-like temper tantrums. Call me old fashioned, but give me 90 overs of classic cricket in a day over 75 of slap bang - some of the best matches are those where a batter is fighting for dear life for his wicket. Some of us have attention spans more than milliseconds.

It all adds up to an emerging god-complex culture in the team. When asked to sum up his approach at Leeds, Jamie Smith said he just decide to charge and swing random balls. That was his plan. Similarly, when Stuart Broad was asked to sum up what playing in Bazball was like, he told a story of how Joe Root decided the night before a test he would hit the first ball left handed, and the promptly did and missed the ball by a mile. Broad told it giggling like a schoolgirl, and lauding that independence and flexible. Baz backs this stuff and says players will never be judged for doing it. Are you trying to tell me this is a successful, repeatable blueprint for winning big series? To ignore the quality of a ball, conditions, state of the match - and just randomly decide at regular intervals you will swing the kitchen sink at whatever comes your way? Apparently this is "calculated risk"... there is nothing calculated about it.

We are increasingly reaching the point where England's whole philosophy seems to be to ignore established wisdom as a default position, and just for the sake of it. It's part of their self-imposed identity, and one they are starting to get carried away with. True innovation can result in pushing boundaries and reinventing new ways, but the idea that every single universally accepted idea in the game is on the table to be ripped up and reconstructed is just silly, especially when the culture of the team is to make these judgements based on whims or counter-factual analysis, and then not accept that the plan is ever wrong. Reinvent the process, follow the process - if it doesnt work, the process is never wrong.

Take for instance squad selection. The thing that all players in the side who have done well and established themselves in the side share in common is, they all did well in county cricket. And yet, having built the foundation of the side on that metric, we are now being told by Rob Key that county cricket is worthless. In place of picking people on merit, selection is now becoming more and more maverick, and it hasn't really worked. Bethell was outclassed this test. Overton bowled like a drain in perfect bowling conditions. Bashir has been rubbish as the spinner, and his figures couldn't be poorer when freebie wickets against a following on Zimbabwe tail are taken into account. Call me mad, but the very minimum expectation for elevation to international test cricket should be being bothered to actually play 4 day cricket. Anyone who refuses to play for their counties should be disqualified out of hand. And those that do play have to make the standard - picking players who have no FC hundred and average 25 on the basis they scored runs when they were 15 for their private school should cost people jobs. Picking players who don't play is the same. Picking players who can't get a game at county level while their team field two other bowlers in your discipline is just flat out common sense.

I will never understand how people like Rob Key can believe that a player who does not make the grade at an easier level, can be considered to have characteristics that transfer more than others. In fact, the reasoning is moronic - we are simultaneously told that bowlers in CC are all trundlers that cant take wickets against international standard opposition, but then get told batters averaging 25 against them will elevate against better bowlers. The two things cannot be true at the same time. How can anyone conclude that skills that do not equate to success against worse players, will equate to success against world class ones? On what possible reasoning could that be true? It is a bit like trying to argue someone will get faster depending on who they race again.

The problem with all this is, tearing up county performance in place of random maverick ideas only ends up damaging the source that all the successful elements of the squad come from. Rob Key's distain for the county game is palpable, and he is turning it into a farce. Ideas like using a Kookaburra ball that was designed to be played on concrete hard pitches in Australia on English pitches in late spring, just isn't a test worthy of anything. The simulation is of no comparison to the conditions the team will face in Australia, and even if it was, the test took place when none of the players going out to Australia were actually playing county cricket. We ruined 1/3 of the county season turning it into clown cricket, so that 0 players landing in Australia will have any experience of it. And when Sam Cook was the only bowler to do anything of note in 2024 with a Kookaburra, Key came out to slag his pace of and use him of an example of what is wrong with English bowlers - he didn't get the result he wanted from his test, so he even ignored the results himself. Key's obsession with pace has gone beyond the realms of reality. On an Oval greentop, are you really telling me Overton was a good pick? Do you not think someone like Cook would have been perfect? I think if England picked Cook, we'd have won the series. The pitch was tailor made for him.

It's just another example of fantasy-nomics. We keep being told to win in Australia we need sheer pace, but nothing in the data or history going back decades shows this. The last time England won a series, it was Tim Bresnan bowling medium fast breaking Australia in the business end of the series, and Jimmy Anderson having a brilliant series. Go back to the 1986-87, it was the fading then medium pace of Botham and Gladstone Small that tore Australia apart at Melbourne to win the series, and 35 wickets from England spinners. You have to go back all the way to 1970-71 and John Snow to find an England win in Australia that was lead by sheer pace, and England drew 5 test matches on that tour. It's also not comparable at all as an era - Snow played in an era of no helmets, so the threat of sheer pace was so much more acute. He put three batsman in hospital that tour - and Illingworth's tour diaries tell the tale of him bowling 6 bouncers every over, being warned for intimidatory bowling in every game. You can't do that now, so its not a tactic that has any crossover relevance.

This obsession with creating a team that thrives away in Australia also ignores the fact that we play the majority of our cricket in England. Why we have to continually play bowlers based on how we think they might play elsewhere, while ignoring our own conditions is beyond me. This is made worse by the fact that Bazball demands that our home wickets are pancakes so our batting units can thrive - but in doing so we remove all of the advantages we have at playing at home, and all the unique challenges that poses to players who have not experienced it. Take Shubman Gill - he toured England in 2021 and had a total horror show against the big swinging ball. This time we served him up roads, and he had a historical tour of huge runs. We turned a bowling allrounder into putting up Bradman numbers. We turned a sub-par Rahul into a world class opener. Indian players of the past wouldn't in their wildest dreams hope for pitches like this that totally nullified the conditions. 4 of these test matches could have easily been played Hyderabad, such was the pitch conditions.

All these factors add up. They are reasons why we have not won any of the more important series yet, and for reasons discussed, its hard to see how this will change with an unwillingness for the team to drive any changes. For me, I think its simple.... If England lose in Australia, the captain, the coach and the important backroom staff need to go. A loss would represent a total, abject failure over the whole away cycle. Quite how the narrative is one of success is something I cannot understand. There have been no big successes for bazball yet...

[Durhamfootman]

hard to disagree with any of that

maybe this bit

The ECB are not exactly secretive about their top priorities for test cricket, the future tours program has been shaped purposefully and openly to play more series against sides that they deem worthwhile, and to cut those they do not really care about.

substitute lucrative for worthwhile and less lucrative for don't really care about and I reckon you'll be spot on

[Durhamfootman]

I also like the new approach from Stokes/McC, but they do also talk a lot of sh1t on the way

less talk, more catching practice

[Arthur Crabtree]

Interesting why the press is so upbeat. It doesn't seem like the Flower era of client journalism and creepy invitations to commentators to spend a day in the team bubble. This seems more of a cult. The media (and fans) are entranced by the vibe. At the Oval it seemed Pope was being sacrificed to protect the leaders! Everything was his fault. The crop has failed. Rather than being quietly dropped, he will be burned in a giant wicker man at sunset.

England's loss yesterday wasn't so much about the failed chase. They had been shoddy through the whole game. They froze at the end, but there was pressure and others had done well to put them in that position. Their real failure was the earlier loss when they didn't know what to do because the match was unwinnable. I found that more disappointing. They could have gone out to draw that.

As I mentioned during the last Test, if England's philosophy is to 'walk towards the danger' that means that when the opposition is playing well, then they have to attack more. So there is no real way of learning from bad outcomes. To dig in is to anger the bazball gods. The worse things get, the more you have to do what made them bad,

Still, the Stokes era is more fun and more optimistic than the dreary Cook/Root years. Even if England are not winning as many games as they think they are, it's still more watchable.

[sussexpob]

Interesting why the press is so upbeat. It doesn't seem like the Flower era of client journalism and creepy invitations to commentators to spend a day in the team bubble. This seems more of a cult. The media (and fans) are entranced by the vibe

There are quite obvious conflict of interest between many of England's top commentators and their association to the England setup. Rob Key left his role working with SKY to take up the Team Director role, and is a known close friend and professional collaborator of the senior members of the SKY team. Ian Ward is a former team mate of the Head of Selectors. Michael Vaughan has been a Business Development Manager for player agencies working with many influential England players, something that even lead to established players like Trott in the past openly accusing him of bias due to his own business interests. Broad played under Bazball and talks about Stokes like they are life partners. Steve Finn spent 2 tests talking about Chris Woakes is still key to the team; they are also known to be very close friends. Ali Cook has close links to many of the senior players through his playing days. Steve Harmison from Talksport is also represented by the same agents as Ben Stokes. And Agnew has always been an ECB stooge.

I am not sure we can really expect any objective accountability from these people. Even Atherton has become partisan since the guy he used to do discussion podcasts with every week got the Head Honcho job.

[sussexpob]

This seems more of a cult. The media (and fans) are entranced by the vibe.

Barney Ronay wrote an excellent article a while back using various definitions of cults with examples of England's behaviour to conclude Bazball, by definition, was a cult.

I personally see it as somewhat Orwellian in nature especially given the context of the contemporary culture in society and the media. I guess some may argue that England's media persona is real, and that its just a manifestation of that "not dwelling on losing/always seeing the positive/always follow the process and it is eventually right" stuff, but it feels to convenient for me to acknowledge that. All that boils down to in the end is the total avoidance of accountability. When England lost at Edgbastion in 2023, they claimed they had basically won the game because the aggressive/flat out idiotic declaration they made on Day 1 left runs on the board. The narrative was, if they'd batted to the point of being all out, they'd have won - but that just ignores that the system they have created led to that choice. You can't see we could have won "but for...x" because "x" in this case is also part of the final equation.

As I said, it feels purposeful, like they want to implant this idea of success where there is none. Ollie Robinson was the worst when he wrote an article at 2-0 down in the 2023 saying Australia had no answer to Bazball; they had won back to back tests, they had in fact at that point all the answers. And then we get the total crap of Harry Brook claiming moral victories in the series. It wasn't a failure, no, we won - just morally, whatever that means.

Its probably why England got so shirty about the OT test. 2 hundreds on the board from India's unbroken partnership erodes the "moral victory" argument. They dominated a test to that point, but if India had batted another hour and ended 4 down with a lead of 100, the idea that India could have made some timeless comeback in the game had it been infinite in time starts to come into play - and so England got shirty their moral victory was losing its sheen.

Most of what Baz/Stokes say is counter-factual. Zak Crawley is a match-winner, whether he wins matches or not, simple. When questioned about bad performance, they just say they played well. There is never any admission anything is wrong.

And the press scream after "They love Big Brother"...

[sussexpob]

. In place of picking people on merit, selection is now becoming more and more maverick, and it hasn't really worked. Bethell was outclassed this test.

Well we go deeper into the maverick rabbit hole, as Bethell has now been made limited overs captain when Brook takes a rest after the SA series. I ask myself at this point what dossier he must have on the team hierarchy? Did he find certain people on the Epstein list and is holding them to ransom?

Is on form? No ..... he averages 12 in his last 10 games with the bat, and averages 80 with the ball. He doesn't even get into a county XI on form in any format.

Has he a body of work to fall back on and years of actual performance? No. He has no professional 100, his FC is total pants, his OD record is total pants, and his recent poor form has pushed his T20 record to being barely average. He's also not an all-rounder, his bowling seemingly is less and less utilised.

At the very least, is he doing everything he can to show the selectors he's the right stuff..... no. He has faced only 400 balls in the calendar year. He hardly plays, but I guess at this point we might be assuming his county or team WANTS to play him, because on current form he can't hit a beach ball.

Maybe he has loads of captaincy experience...oh no, wait... zero there.

A decision that makes a mockery of the position. It makes a mockery of the whole professional game in the country.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Does seem a deliberately provocative appointment!

Still, at least they didn't select one of Bob Key's children.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Sonny Baker seems to be the latest on the upwards escalator. The new Josh Hull. 22 fc wickets at 34.

[sussexpob]

Sonny Baker seems to be the latest on the upwards escalator. The new Josh Hull. 22 fc wickets at 34.

The bowling unit is no longer a meritocracy. Baker can bowl near or just over 90mph, and hence he was put in the Lions despite ever having bowled a FC ball, and will now move onto the full team after 22 wickets at above average rates.

I watched him bowl against Surrey, and while he took 5 wickets while Surrey were declaration batting, he was spraying it all over the place before Surry got to that stage. went for 85 in 14 overs...