Bazball 2024

[PhatBoy]

Bazball 3-1 down in India and far less competitive than we were last year on doctored wickets.
Complete garbage concept from McCullum.

Glad they're losing.

You haven’t been watching much have you


Let’s look at a few things.

Rubbish concept?

They’ve lost 1 series in 8.

So, um, yeah.

For a team that won 1 tests in 17 beforehand, yeah, I’d say the ‘rubbish concept’ comment still needs a little more definitive proof than ‘being 3-1 down in a country where the hosts have lost 4 matches in a decade’ before the jury well and truly makes up its mind.

The second part?

Well dodgy wickets part as people with any level of nous should realise by now, really doesn’t do much to assist the hosts if they don’t have the batsmen to take advantage of it. If you’ve got Azharuddin, Ganguly, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman at their peak? Sure, it’s great. When you don’t? You get Todd Murphy taking bags of wickets. It brings the gap between the teams closer together.

And India still managed to win the second test by an innings and 130 runs, same as England got beaten by 400 runs, or had you forgotten that, plus Australia’s win was in a dead rubber.

England won a live rubber, lost a test by 5 wickets, another by 100 runs. Not exactly huge margins are they.

I’d say on the whole the results aren’t dissimilar except that England were leading the series and Australia weren’t.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Funny when guys forget someone put them on ignore and respond thinking you give a toss.

But Bazball makes Stokesy proud in defeat so that's all that matters. That and aggression with no consequences.
Crock of rubbish.

 

[PhatBoy]

I don’t care if someone puts me on ignore or not. If someone posts garbage and I have an opinion on it I will still give my own.

At some point people will realise that while the criticism of their boasting and so forth is more than warranted - god knows it’s incredibly cringeworthy - the lack of analysis of what sort of cricket they are actually producing is the only thing that rivals England’s media ‘unsavviness’ for stupidity.


I mean seriously, people expecting them to try and beat India with a team including two batsmen that have a test average over 40, IN India, by playing ‘conventional’ cricket and then criticising them when they actually get within a bull’s roar and it doesn’t quite work?

 

[Gethelred]

I don’t care if someone puts me on ignore or not. If someone posts garbage and I have an opinion on it I will still give my own.

At some point people will realise that while the criticism of their boasting and so forth is more than warranted - god knows it’s incredibly cringeworthy - the lack of analysis of what sort of cricket they are actually producing is the only thing that rivals England’s media ‘unsavviness’ for stupidity.


I mean seriously, people expecting them to try and beat India with a team including two batsmen that have a test average over 40, IN India, by playing ‘conventional’ cricket and then criticising them when they actually get within a bull’s roar and it doesn’t quite work?

...

Spoilsport.

 

[PoopingHindi]

I like what England have done since Key took over and appointed McCullum. they took a complete basket case and turned it into a cohesive and competitive unit…but there’s no denying they’ve been utterly destroyed in this series.

they’ll talk up the positives but the glaring negatives can’t be brushed aside.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Who cares about losing 8 wickets in 40 overs and an innings defeat. Scoring at 4 an over though!

 

[010203]

Who cares about losing 8 wickets in 40 overs and an innings defeat. Scoring at 4 an over though!

Think of the golf they can play for the last two scheduled days of this test though.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Think of the golf they can play for the last two scheduled days of this test though.

If they play golf like they cricket they'll be done in 90 minutes and have had 120 shots.

 

[Teen Wolf]

Would've lost 4-0 at home against Australia if Lyon didn't get injured, so losing 4-1 in India was about as good as it was ever gonna get.

 

[dumb]

I don’t care if someone puts me on ignore or not. If someone posts garbage and I have an opinion on it I will still give my own.

At some point people will realise that while the criticism of their boasting and so forth is more than warranted - god knows it’s incredibly cringeworthy - the lack of analysis of what sort of cricket they are actually producing is the only thing that rivals England’s media ‘unsavviness’ for stupidity.


I mean seriously, people expecting them to try and beat India with a team including two batsmen that have a test average over 40, IN India, by playing ‘conventional’ cricket and then criticising them when they actually get within a bull’s roar and it doesn’t quite work?

England found a method that worked for a bit, faltered a bit in the ashes, got them a test win and a shot at the series in India, didn't work.

I enjoy that they've taken this approach. Until getting through the series, you couldn't say they're not entertaining. I remember having the fear of God when crawley and Ducky would walk out (bit afraid of field settings and tactics too) in the Ashes. Absolutely they should maintain their strategy.
But you can make arguments that they should tweak or be flexible, too. Batting longer, if possible, might have given their bowlers time to refresh, wear out the Indian bowlers, or present different pitch conditions to india, or earn a draw instead of lose. Maybe it was just their own bowlers not able to knock over India quick enough. Maybe there's a happy medium between scoring 5 runs an over and dropping anchor.
They live and die by the sword. And that creates some interesting cricket.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

 

[PhatBoy]

England found a method that worked for a bit, faltered a bit in the ashes, got them a test win and a shot at the series in India, didn't work.

I enjoy that they've taken this approach. Until getting through the series, you couldn't say they're not entertaining. I remember having the fear of God when crawley and Ducky would walk out (bit afraid of field settings and tactics too) in the Ashes. Absolutely they should maintain their strategy.
But you can make arguments that they should tweak or be flexible, too. Batting longer, if possible, might have given their bowlers time to refresh, wear out the Indian bowlers, or present different pitch conditions to india, or earn a draw instead of lose. Maybe it was just their own bowlers not able to knock over India quick enough. Maybe there's a happy medium between scoring 5 runs an over and dropping anchor.
They live and die by the sword. And that creates some interesting cricket.

For starters I will say that England themselves need to remember that there’s two main aspects to cricket and so do other people and the one that failed them the most relative to the other, as far as visiting teams to India go, is their bowling.

They had good performances at different times from Crawley, Root, Pope and Duckett. Four batsmen showed either one off or consistently that they could produce. So their batting had SOME signs.

Their bowling sorely let them down. This seems to have been completely ignored and they seem to have overlooked it themselves

 

[Skeppersap]

For starters I will say that England themselves need to remember that there’s two main aspects to cricket and so do other people and the one that failed them the most relative to the other, as far as visiting teams to India go, is their bowling.

They had good performances at different times from Crawley, Root, Pope and Duckett. Four batsmen showed either one off or consistently that they could produce. So their batting had SOME signs.

Their bowling sorely let them down. This seems to have been completely ignored and they seem to have overlooked it themselves

With regards to their batting, they had 1 player average over 40 for the series (just), and 1 player average over 35 (just). 2 of their batsmen were in the low 20s.

They were terrible all round, and it was just one off innings that prevented a 5-0 whitewash.

Not the case if you ask anyone associated with England cricket though!

 

[010203]

England found a method that worked for a bit, faltered a bit in the ashes, got them a test win and a shot at the series in India, didn't work.

I enjoy that they've taken this approach. Until getting through the series, you couldn't say they're not entertaining. I remember having the fear of God when crawley and Ducky would walk out (bit afraid of field settings and tactics too) in the Ashes. Absolutely they should maintain their strategy.
But you can make arguments that they should tweak or be flexible, too. Batting longer, if possible, might have given their bowlers time to refresh, wear out the Indian bowlers, or present different pitch conditions to india, or earn a draw instead of lose. Maybe it was just their own bowlers not able to knock over India quick enough. Maybe there's a happy medium between scoring 5 runs an over and dropping anchor.
They live and die by the sword. And that creates some interesting cricket.

This is a very good point. Batting long enough to give your bowlers time to refresh is crucial especially if one of them turns 42 this year. England scored and declared on 393 on day 1 at Edgbaston which is pretty good but the Aussies only bowled 78 overs on that day and thus they didn't exactly tire them out in the process of getting that 1st innings score. It's possibly to play with positive intent and not look stupid (Ben Duckett today for instance).

 

[010203]

Am I alone in thinking the West Indies can win a test in England during our winter this year?

 

[ioppolo]

Am I alone in thinking the West Indies can win a test in England during our winter this year?

Given they knocked us off at home, why not? England are their own enemies a lot of the time.

 

[Ohitsthatguy]

West Indies test hopes rest on Shamar Joseph

 

[PhatBoy]

Am I alone in thinking the West Indies can win a test in England during our winter this year?

No. We won one last time why couldn’t we do it again

 

[PhatBoy]

West Indies test hopes rest on Shamar Joseph

No they don’t.

We beat them in a test last time we toured there on the back of Shannon Gabriel who, while similarly quick to Joseph, is a completely different type of bowler.

Our hopes rest on finding a top 7 who can be disciplined enough to absorb whatever swing based bowling attack England selects and learns to play the way Kraigg Brathwaite has played over there in previous tours. He averages a tick under 40 and has been quite good thanks to his ability to be pretty selective outside off stump.

Our bowling with the two Josephs, Kemar Roach, and hopefully by that stage Jason Holder should present a decent challenge in general.

 

[Adelaide Hawk]

There's nothing wrong with Bazball per se, Bradman played it for most of his career. The trick is, you have to be good enough to do it, and I think it's safe to say that many English players don't have the skills to pull it off.

 

[PhatBoy]

There's nothing wrong with Bazball per se, Bradman played it for most of his career. The trick is, you have to be good enough to do it, and I think it's safe to say that many English players don't have the skills to pull it off.

They don’t have the skills to pull off the alternative either.

 

[swingdog]

Was interesting to listen to a more reflective and humbled McCullum after the last test.

On the one hand he recognised that there needed to be some tweaks to allow good players, like Root, to play their natural game rather than everyone going aggressive from ball one. On the other hand, will he pick players that only know how to do that?

The bowling is a whole other shitshow. I have a feeling they'll stick with Anderson and Wood when they should be planning for the future (e.g. Potts - who has done okay on the Lions tour - Atkinson and Tongue). Spinners are a better news story but will they get a long bowl at county level?

If you compare where they are now to their last really great side (2009-12), they're a mile off it. That's what they need to be honest about.

 

[PhatBoy]

Was interesting to listen to a more reflective and humbled McCullum after the last test.

On the one hand he recognised that there needed to be some tweaks to allow good players, like Root, to play their natural game rather than everyone going aggressive from ball one. On the other hand, will he pick players that only know how to do that?

The bowling is a whole other shitshow. I have a feeling they'll stick with Anderson and Wood when they should be planning for the future (e.g. Potts - who has done okay on the Lions tour - Atkinson and Tongue). Spinners are a better news story but will they get a long bowl at county level?

If you compare where they are now to their last really great side (2009-12), they're a mile off it. That's what they need to be honest about.

To be fair the media built up the ‘all out aggression’ aspect a bit more than the captain and coach ever explicitly did - their words were mostly always about ‘playing with freedom and without worrying about fear and playing naturally.’ I don’t think there was a HUGE emphasis on telling players ‘you HAVE to go out there and smash it’ - they picked players who play aggressively in general. The only player who was really seemingly going noticeably out of his normal comfort zone was Root and he is pretty adaptable.

Maybe the fact that they were immediately successful with their approach made it easier for them to say ‘we aren’t worried about results.’ Had they lost first up they would have really struggled to say that. Now that they’ve had a pretty heavy series loss they don’t really have a choice but to address it.

I can’t wait for the West Indies to take them on.

 

[Rabish Binney]

Stokes said before the Ashes last year that the Bazball philosophy was " not about being a results driven team"

So what happens now?

They've said on numerous occasions that they wont stop with the 'tactic'. But will the ECB and the Pommy crowds continue to support them if they are not winning?

What happens if they lose the series to the Windies? Even a drawn series would be seen as a failure.

If they keep losing / drawing tests then how long will the ECB put up with it? How much longer will the pommy crowds put up with it?
Some of the pommy press are now starting to deride the tactic. Once they are offside, then look out. They wont hold back.

And what happens with the players who aren't performing? As long as they play the Bazball way but keep failing, is that acceptable?

Case in point is Bairstow....he clearly has the game to play Bazball but his keeping is putrid. Foakes is (probably) the best 'pure' keeper in world cricket yet he cant play Bazball.....so he was sacrificed in the Ashes series and it cost England dearly with Bairstow's sloppy keeping.

Well they've backed themselves well and truly into a corner over it.

 

[MortlockWatcher]

Rubbish concept?

They’ve lost 1 series in 8.

But England are 8th out of 9 in the WTC.

If it was a good concept or a concept performed well, they wouldn't be eighth.