Bazball doubters beware – England’s truth is the only truth that matters،
How could you have doubted that England would emerge triumphant in the first Test in Hyderabad? Well, let's count the paths…
Perhaps your skepticism arose in December, at the time of the England squad announcement, when the only statistics that could justify Tom Hartley's call-up centered on his “release point”, rather than his 40 wickets in 20 first-class matches. Write in the Daily MailPaul Newman said Hartley's presence was “a reflection of the lack of spin options available in domestic cricket”.
Perhaps that skepticism was on display early last week when, Bazball-style, Ben Stokes announced his three-round, one-seam team more than 24 hours before the draw, as if he was determined to be a martyr to pride. “Bazbollocks!” said veteran broadcaster Jim Maxwell on X/Twitter. “Absurd selection. Unbalanced. Inexperienced. At least England chose a wicketkeeper”.
Perhaps your hopes were rallied during England's spirited opener on the first morning of the Test, only to be dashed in the 15th innings by Ollie Pope's horrendous 1 off 11 ball, a tormented stay that s 'is finished with a stiff hand to slide. . (I'm going to throw my own prediction under the bus here: “I probably wouldn't pick Pope again,” had been my hot version of the ESPNcricinfo pre-series. Switch flick podcast. “I'm not sure I trust him in these conditions…”
Or maybe on the first afternoon you took one look at Hartley's left-arm offerings – just as Yashasvi Jaiswal did at the start of India's innings – and grimaced when his first delivery was transported for a long time for the first of two six in the finished. “Simon Kerrigan!” » declared social media in unison, as another poorly-starred Lancastrian left-arm spinner mysteriously began trending online.
Don't worry, you wouldn't be alone if you put aside your confidence in England's continued existence. Steve Harmison's tipping point, for example, was long past, at the team's golf training and holiday camp in Abu Dhabi, days before the first Test.
It's player power, that's all, and it stinks,” Harmison thundered on talkSPORT, adding that an England team “would never take part in an Ashes series in Australia just three days before it starts . Oh really? Here’s my piña colada, Harmy…
Because here we are, 48 hours after the event, assessing the void in the narrative where our collective preconceptions once resided. England's 14th victory in 19 Tests of the Bazball era was undoubtedly the most astonishing of the lot, and anyone who claims this was never in doubt is delusional.
Which of course brings us to the heart of the problem.
For there is an element of post-truth in England's absurd belief. For example, at the end of the second day's play, with England facing a deficit of 175 and climbing, and pieces of Hartley's bowling figures still being recovered from the stadium rafters, Jeetan Patel, the spin coach, was sent trotting off to do a round of play. media interviews that redefined the boundaries of positive reinforcement.
Neil Manthorp, Harmison's sidekick on talkSPORT, could hardly believe his ears as Patel began to chart England's route to victory, in blatant disregard of all available evidence. “Nothing is impossible with this group,” Patel said. “I know they are excited to have this opportunity with the bat [in the third innings] and where they can take the game from there.”
“If I was an England player who had just reached 100, I would want Jeetan Patel as my coach,” Manthorp told his listeners moments later. “I would like to fall into his arms in the locker room and be reassured by him.”
It wasn't just the radio waves that were dismissive of England's tactics for this Test. “Bazball is collapsing in India and it’s England’s fault,” the newspaper headline said. Iwhile in Australia, Fox Sports mocked the old enemy's apparent obsession with “moral victories”, while citing the The telegraph accusation that Stokes' men had “clucked the Koolaid”.
Two days later, of course, all the noise died down as disbelief swept the board, but the wonder remained that at no point was any of this talk considered. in the first place.
Because Bazball defies analysis, in the most literal and stubborn sense. He makes fun analysis. He thanks the media for being interested in his exploits (and for propagating the entertainment factor which remains a fundamental principle of the approach), but any opinion on how to define it, let alone refine it, should be left in a pile outside the frame. dressing room door, thank you very much.
This constitutes an epically effective echo chamber, a closed loop of confirmation bias. Those outside the locker room can quibble all they want about decisions, missteps, areas for obvious improvement. But, just as England stuck by Zak Crawley's increasingly thin side in 2022, then reaped the rewards of that faith with the Ashes, the group itself will not hear a word of doubt within these walls …ensuring that there can be no doubt when it all comes together.
Aggression combined with positive reinforcement is not unique among successful sports teams (just look at Jurgen Klopp's impact at Liverpool), but tactically speaking, Bazball is more of a Jedi trick than cricket. heavy metal. There is a clear technical sense underlying England's approach – one aspect of Hartley's second-innings bounce, for example, was Patel's suggestion that he slow down his swing to concentrate more on his action – but it seems that nothing was more important to his resurrection state. in spirit as the team which bypassed him and exalted the six he had bowled out from R Ashwin, the opener of the England tour.
This willful ignorance of the established facts of Test cricket can and will land England in a number of sticky situations, perhaps none more so than the infamous Edgbaston statement which changed the fate of the Ashes last summer. But you'll never hear Stokes utter a word of regret in such moments, least of all McCullum, who doubled down at the end of that same Test by declaring that England's two-wicket defeat felt like “a victory”.
And the more they reaffirm seemingly untenable positions, the more difficult it is to penetrate this exo-skeleton of supreme self-confidence.
This is where Bazball is truly unique and arguably inimitable. Individual feats of genius have been the hallmark of Test upsets throughout history, but almost without exception the greatest have been solipsistic masterpieces, compiled in defiance of a team that would have collapsed without their iron will. Think Brian Lara in Barbados in 1999, Graham Gooch at Headingley in 1991 or Kevin Pietersen in the Ashes toss at The Oval 2005.
Pope's 196 in Hyderabad is obviously a worthy addition to the canon: the next highest score was Ben Duckett's 47, and Stokes once described it as the greatest innings by an Englishman in Asia. Yet he was not pulled from the depths of adversity like all those last-chance ancestors, but from a pedestal of opportunity provided by this undeniably supportive locker room. We could have been watching Crawley at Old Trafford, Harry Brook at Rawalpindi, Bairstow at Trent Bridge or Edgbaston 2022, or any of the 24 centuries England have compiled in 19 matches in the Bazball era. Regardless of the match situation, the permission to strut was the same.
As an individual, the last England player to face such a bulletproof character was arguably Pietersen around 2006 – after his starring role in the Ashes, and before the advent of DRS and its many problems against the left-arm spinners. Criticism bounced off him during this period, just as cricket balls hit his cheeky attacking blade, and as for his vindication of the times he succumbed to fractional error of judgment, well, “c 'That's just how I play'… a mantra Eoin Morgan would borrow a decade later as the cornerstone of England's renaissance, through the white ball and now the red.
But Pietersen was one of the players in a moderately successful Test team, not a four-square philosophy that offered not the slightest mental weakness. In the final years of his career, the realities of elite sport had eaten away at his armor and left his vulnerabilities all too visible – and perhaps, with enough investigation from opponents and pundits, the same will be she once said of Bazball as a collective ethos. . But if after results like the one in Hyderabad, you are starting to doubt that this day will come, you are surely not alone.
