The magnificent Dhauladhar range of Dharamshala bore witness as England capitulated for the one final time at the hands of the Indian juggernaut last week.
On a true surface, in conditions the visitors would take less adjusting to, and after losing the toss, it took India less than three days to bowl the opponents out twice and somewhere in the middle of it, break their spirit in the field too.
At the end of the fifth Test, England perhaps couldn’t have asked for the series to end any sooner. Their frailties stood exposed. The sheer inadequacy of their bowling resources to force a result in these conditions couldn’t have been made any clearer. For all the flamboyance and aggression it boasts of, their batting remained painfully out of depth for the better part of the five Tests.
The proverbial Bazball – a neologism coined by ESPNCricinfo journalist Andrew Miller to describe the new brand of Test cricket England have adopted under the current regime – spectacularly folded against a time-tested, seasoned, and uncomplicated method of winning Test matches.
When England decided to metamorphosise their Test setup in the summer of 2022 after a long streak of underwhelming results, it was about a shift in mindset and less about a change in personnel. Former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum was brought in to oversee this transition while the captaincy mantle was handed over to Ben Stokes.
Playing in an unusually aggressive manner was critical to the philosophy this new regime employed, even if, at times it came at the cost of some key fundamentals. Playing a long-drawn, attritional game was suddenly so last-season and those not willing to mend their ways were no longer welcome here.
McCullum’s own Test career in fact had been characterised by this approach. He never boasted of the strongest defence but more than made up for it with inventive strokeplay and a higher willingness to take risks than most players would. He’d never coached a Test side before landing the high-profile job at England. His coaching stints were limited to T20 franchises but perhaps that’s exactly what England were after – a change in optics.
McCullum brought with him a personality that was easily identifiable to the narrative spin that England were looking for after a prolonged period of mediocrity. Add to it Stokes’s reputation for being a man who stood up in the big moments and you couldn’t have asked for two more saleable names to make a transformative idea float.
On surface, there was nothing to not love about the new approach. It was indeed refreshing and constantly engaging. There was palpable urgency in how England batted. Run scoring was brisk. Every single member in the squad completely bought into the idea and showed little hesitance in embracing the additional risks it demanded taken.
The inherent nature of Test cricket still requires a team to be abundantly resourceful to take 20 wickets. There’s no substitute to this. Other than in those weather-affected condensed Tests where teams are desperately trying to force a result, it’s imperative to bowl teams out twice in order to win. An overlooked aspect in England’s early success during the Bazball era was their bowling attack kept achieving this with remarkable consistency.
Bazball won its validation among fans and media alike through Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root’s audacious batting in the 2022 summer. It was in all honesty nothing like anything anyone had ever seen. England were reversing every tenet that was considered sacred to Test batting.
However, in adverse conditions and against stronger oppositions, the exuberance with the bat was only going to take them so far unless they built the bowling muscle to compete. And this is precisely where Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma’s India bled them dry.
India saw no reason to be rattled by the storm England meant to throw at them. Sure, the Ben Ducketts and the Ollie Popes of the world would keep manufacturing low-percentage shots and even execute them with more success than an average player would. In the end though, the quality and depth in bowling resources would tilt the scale India’s way.
England’s bowlers on the other hand were no match for India on either front. Their seamers were old and fragile, while their rookie spinners – despite promise – were out of their element for the most part. The additional hilt with the bat was never going to make up for this glaring shortcoming in their squad. But Stokes and McCullum never once compromised on batting cushion in pushing for a win. Underneath the veneer of positivity and gung-ho aggression, England actually played it quite safe.
None of this invalidates the decisive shift in approach that they’ve made since the coming together of the current leadership group. They’ve truly played an enthralling brand of cricket and has indeed gotten more people glued to their TV screens than before.
But so far, barring an exceptional whitewash of Pakistan away from home, they’ve only accomplished what should be deemed the bare minimum for a team for their resources. Of the two biggest overseas assignments in the game, they’re yet to take one and have been thoroughly clobbered in the other.
Now, getting comprehensively beaten in India is rather on expected lines for any visiting team barring Australia. It certainly is no declaration of failure of the Bazball project. But given the nauseatingly self-indulgent discourse the English commentariat has built around Bazball, perhaps a little grounding if not outright humbling was long overdue.
Sanctimony and self-righteousness were never the most unfamiliar traits to English cricket. But they’ve scaled new heights in the last couple of years as the current team management have allegedly taken it upon themselves to save, revive, reinvigorate, redefine, reinvent, and while they’re at it, maybe even rebirth Test cricket.
That Bazball is a renaissance that will make Test matches entertaining, we must be reminded every time the camera pans on Stokes. Every time Stokes makes a bowling change, or opts for a funky-looking field, or prematurely declares an innings for no apparent gain, it must be acknowledged that it’s being done to safeguard the future of Test cricket.
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Lawrence Booth, the editor of Wisden has already co-authored a book called ‘Bazball’ that claims to tell the inside story of a ‘Test Cricket Revolution’. The revolution the book wants to talk about had at the time of its publishing failed to win the Ashes at home and was yet to embark on a tour of India or Australia. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop the authors from shaming the two most successful modern era Test teams for not replicating England’s approach already.
In citing an instance of India playing a Test in the Caribbean in 2023, the book raises concerns over the uninspiring strike rates at which star Indian batters Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were chugging along. In a 2024 wishlist piece for Daily Mail, Booth expresses his disappointment at Australia’s unlikeliness to take a leaf out of the Poms’ book with their middle order mainstays Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne operating in their own bubble.
Smith, Kohli, Labuschagne, and Sharma are among the finest batters in the modern game and boast of an infinitely superior career to every current England batter bar Joe Root. But the four must still mend their ways and play a game that satisfies the idea the English have decided to rally behind.
The overzealous and fervent coverage wouldn’t quite matter on its own. The English press is quite famous for it and rather prides itself in being wind-up merchants of sorts. Except the England players too actively do their bit in peddling puffery around the cult of Bazball.
Defeats under this regime have been explained away by players themselves as insignificant as long as the style of play is not compromised. After Australia pulled an incredible heist at Edgbaston in the opening Ashes Test last year, McCullum practically implied it was in fact England’s fast-paced approach that left enough time for Australia to force a win. In McCullum’s heady imaginations, it felt like they’d won.
Going one step ahead from his coach, Stokes in fact dismissed the idea of his team affording a place to players wanting to stick to a more traditional way of batting. Speaking to former England captain Nasser Hussain, Stokes minced no words in his disapproval of players in the Alastair Cook or Jonathan Trott mould – two of England’s batting linchpins in unarguably their most dominant era in the 21st century.
Nobody wants to deliberately undersell themselves in the press. Words are often instruments of mind games too. It’s often a distraction tactic to keep the team’s actual flaws from being excessively spoken of. Talking up your style of play in the press may have its benefits. But buying into that hype yourself is hardly prudent. England currently are borderline high on their own supply.
Rohit Sharma’s India have for now laid bare the limits to which you could challenge the elemental nature of Test cricket. And England, for all their flair and bravado have found themselves to be painfully ineffectual. It’s unlikely for things to go significantly different on their next trip to Australia because no matter how hard they go with the bat, their current supply line isn’t producing bowlers to offer them a competitive edge in foreign conditions.
India managed to very swiftly turn the tide in this series with a fairly young core of players despite losing the opening Test. They weren’t particularly reactive, stuck to their formula, and continued playing the brand that suits them without a care in the world for whether Lawrence Booth is content with them doing enough to save Test cricket. England too might want to try that. Their fans may just be as open to actual victories as the team thinks they are to moral ones.
