Lords (TIP)- Bazball. Bazball. Bazball. It is always only about Bazball. Irritating frankly. For the amount of hype that it gets, Bazball has not really won England the world title in two separate World Test Championship cycles.
As India get ready to play England in a 5-match Test series, it is once again about Bazball. To be fair, the hype had been a little less this time, but it was Joe Root, who once again triggered the term, stating that Bazball never quite got the credit for the tactical nuance that it carried with it.
“It might not always get reported how it is—I don’t think ‘Bazball’ is the right way to describe it. It has been a big change and is different to how a lot of teams play, but there is a lot more method to it than is probably perceived,” the former England captain said a day before the start of the opening Test match in Headingly.
That then, obviously demands the question, what really is Bazball?
The funniest thing perhaps is that Bazball, the highly aggressive form of cricket, with both bat and ball, which promised to make Test cricket more interesting, is a term hated by its makers. On multiple occasions, England Test cricketers have come out and gone on record that Baz (Brendon McCullum) believes that Bazball is a term given by the media to hype up England’s approach to Test cricket.
“It’s a phrase that was created by the media. Something that we try and stay away from. It just came from what we have managed to do over the last two years and how we’ve played. We don’t necessarily like it, Baz (coach Brendon McCullum) hates it! Whenever that word pops up, we just try to say that’s how England plays Test cricket,” Stokes told the media going into England’s Test tour of India in 2024.
But is that not what England set out to do? Bring back crowd with a high-risk brand of cricket?