Consider the words of Ben Stokes, English test cricket captain and champion of the cavalier, offensive “Bazball” style of play. He was speaking in the wake of the thrashing Australia dealt them in Perth, in their Ashes tour down-under. England took a historic towelling over just two days. Worse, only hours before defeat at the merciless hands of batsman Travis Head, they had had their old enemy on the ropes. The collapse left Stokes “shellshocked.” Yet the shock, it seems, was only emotional. With regard to the substance of how England chose to play, they would not change a damn thing. Success belonged only to those “who were really brave and who took the game on.” Australia’s bowlers must be licking their lips.
England’s only deficiency, this implied, was that it hadn’t done “Bazball” enough. Like other revolutionaries, the Bazballers are impervious to inconvenient realities. Their revolution cannot fail. It can only be failed. Singing a similar tune, England coach and Bazball co-creator Brendon McCullum absolved the team, and therefore its doctrine. Curious observers had asked what this severe defeat said about England’s “Rock and Roll” cricket, in particular their batsmen’s adventurous shot selection, going for perilous drives “on the up” and early in their innings, outside off stump on a high velocity wicket. These moves were especially unforced, given the circumstances. England had days to spare to grind down the opposition, with a promising lead, nine wickets in hand and a ferocious pace battery to defend what they built.
McCullum was unmoved. England had lost only because of bad fortune, being overpowered by a great individual Aussie’s performance. “We won’t be changing our blueprint.” His metaphor was revealing: “We’re married to that, and we won’t back down from that over the next four Tests.” Note the language. “Married.” “Courage.” Don’t “back down.” As with Stokes, it is not a matter of adjustment or fine-tuning from error, or tempering the vision with a little prudence. It is a matter of morality and absolutes. Its cricket is primarily a matter of virtue, a vision of how things should be.
After all, hadn’t Travis Head not just out-Bazballed the Bazballers, vindicating England’s approach by applying it better with his outlandish stroke play? Well, not quite, as some astute veterans noted. Head’s innings in its opening bars was watchful as he took the wicket’s measure. He then accelerated but with calculated risks, avoiding fatal cover flings for a time. In that margin — between aggressive cricket and reckless cricket — lies the decisive difference. But by the time Stokes and McCullum processed it, it was only further evidence that they were Right.
A wider debate has intensified, including within English ranks, about the wisdom of this revolution and its dogmatic tendency. And each time the question comes up, the revolutionaries’ answer betrays a certain attitude, namely a disdain for the past. When cricket veterans questioned the Bazballers’ light preparations for different conditions down-under, Stokes replied thus: “…we can’t prepare how the has-beens may have prepared in the past … The landscape of cricket has changed.”
Perhaps so. But he could have made his case without the disdain for his forbears — some with good records against better Australian sides. Ancestor-condescension, though, is no slip of the tongue. It lies at the core of Bazball. Having been turned over by Australia and asked whether he might send struggling top order batsmen to acclimatise by playing the Prime Minister’s XI, he was dismissive on the same basis. “That’s how it was done a long time ago.” Time is on our side, and we will bury you.
And two summers ago, asked whether his outfit would have room for a young version of Ashes-winning Ashes captain and accumulator Alastair Cook — over 12000 test runs, average of 45, sixth highest run scorer in the game — Stokes said no, it was “not for this day and age.” One can imagine Cook, or contemporaries like Ian Bell, coming in handy in Perth, taking a few more hours to grind Australia down bloody mindedly and build a mountainous lead. But no. History is bad, never a source of wisdom, only a thing to be broken from, a nightmare from which to awaken. Only the “now” is good.
When Stokes and McCullum took over England’s test cricket side, it marked the end of an old order that they happily took to the sword. In its place — replacing what they saw as dismal, uninspired, turgid cricket — came “Bazball.” What this thing was, precisely, proved shape-shifting, an aesthetic as much as a method. At times, as with India in England’s last summer, its champions modified it a little, a flexibility that was not on display in Perth. Bazball’s tactical essence, though, is clear. English cricket no longer prizes patience, calculated risk, or stoic endurance. The new faith is to attack, attack, attack.
Bazball aimed not only to be offensive-minded. Plenty of sides had done that, historically, whether Clive Lloyd’s West Indies or Rickey Ponting’s Australia. No, the point is to embrace the New Way no matter what, to make a virtue of inflexibility. Not to tailor one’s tempo or risk appetite to the opposition. Not to take one step back. Not to switch gears, not even in Australia, where the grounds’ larger acreage make it harder to blast the ball over the fence. Rather, one must impose one’s game on the enemy from ball one. Pressure must be imposed, never absorbed. It is about liberating players from fear. Fearlessness is one thing, obliviousness is another. Under the new order, the compliant can play while assured that they will have a very long rope, provided they submit to the ethos. As with many revolutionary regimes, conformity trumps effectiveness.
This new, high-risk high-reward cricketing ethos would not only save England from mediocrity. The results were indeed better than the immediate period beforehand, though that was a low bar. No, the new way would save cricket itself. As devotees recently told Australian journalist Adam Collins on the eve of the current tour, England are not just going to Australia to dominate. “They’re going there to save the game we love.” If Stokes regained the Ashes, he would go down literally as the “greatest test captain of all time.” There it is: the self-regard, the childish hyperbole, the zealous-eyed certainty. Little wonder that astute observers noted the similarities of Bazball with cults.
There is no rational arguing with it, however. Bazball’s rationales are circular and unfalsifiable. Results matter when England wins, vindicating the new order. When England loses, results matter less than the virtuous way of playing. What are you complaining about? The grounds are packed! The Barmy Army is in full voice! Well, as others have noted elsewhere, failing to win trophies brings a boredom of its own.
Because Bazball is first and foremost a dream about how things ought to be, of offence unfettered by defence, it doesn’t consistently work against the strongest sides. So the faithful must live in the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” world of counterfactuals and moral victories. Australia, it is said, only held onto the Ashes in 2023 because rain saved them from one likely defeat. Quite a philosophy, that — relying on consistent dry weather in England. If the Bazballers lose matches they are poised to win, it is because they haven’t been adventurous enough. Alternatively, preventable defeats are part of the ride, into a glorious dawn of entertaining cricket.
Revolutions often repudiate the past and look to defy time itself
“Entertainment” is always Bazball’s fallback line, when all else has failed. As though the only form of stimulation is the surface thrill of helter-skelter hitting. As though cricket, for those with attention spans, doesn’t serve up other compelling dramas that grip the mind and gladden the memory. Watch Allan Donald pummelling Michael Atherton in those dark old days, and Atherton’s steely survival, for instance, and say otherwise. Travelling English fans in Perth might also have preferred a slower and longer test match, with time allowing fortunes to swing and with their top order putting more value on their wicket. All that glitters is not gold. Perhaps that is why pre-Bazball Ashes cricket didn’t need saving in the first place. English grounds in the 2015 and 2019 Ashes were packed to capacity. As Stoke City manager Alan Durban once advised, “if you want entertainment, go and watch a bunch of clowns.”
And then time intruded into paradise. Yes, the Bazballers could clear pickets, elevate the run rate and sometimes, chase down steep fourth innings targets. Stokes, the doctrine’s champion and embodiment, could seize moments and wrest back contests impossibly like a legendary Viking. Only, despite miracles now and then, they could never beat the biggest beasts over a series. Time and again against India or Australia, they would attack their way into the ascendancy, only to squander opportunities through their impatience and want of ruthlessness. Their overall returns in the International Cricket Council’s placings and championship are mediocre.
This is not a mentality conducive to revision or pragmatic adjustment
Revolutions often repudiate the past and look to defy time itself. Sweeping away old orders and despising hard-won traditions, rather than standing on the shoulders of giants, they try to create a “new man” above the rubble. Accelerated demolitions of the status quo often involve a wanton assault on history. Overthrowing existing ways of doing things can bring a certain, dangerous exhilaration at the very process of burning down legacy institutions, with all their riches, and liquidating their defenders. The past is rotten. The present heroic. The future is radiant.
This is not a mentality conducive to revision or pragmatic adjustment. As calendars are rewritten and “year zero” declared, expect to see guillotines get to work and the gulags fill, or in this case, the shrill indignation to rise as the believers double down, especially when the revolution meets breakdown and dissent. Neither is this just a Leftist phenomenon. It is a mindset that grips Jacobins of the Right, too. As well as Leninist and Maoists, MAGA-Musk-DOGE revolutionaries cast themselves and the present as redemptive. Lest we stretch the analogy, obviously Stokes and McCullum are architects of a non-violent, self-styled revolution in cricket. Still, the revolutionary cast of mind disfigures their judgement.
As it happens, test cricket globally does indeed have a problem. But it is more systemic and profound than a deficit of sixes and superficial thrills. Rather, it is the triopoly of the “Big Three” cartel of India, England and Australia, their self-serving domination of the schedule and revenues, at the expense of test cricket elsewhere. But that’s another story that has been powerfully told. In the meantime, the sport’s self-proclaimed saviours will not bend. To paraphrase Barbara Tuchman’s verdict of Spanish King Philip II, no experience of the failure of their policy can shake their belief in its essential excellence. Such a posture sooner or later runs into reality, an adversary tougher even than Travis Head.
