Has Bazball Been a Success or Failure for English Cricket?

Would you rather win at all costs or lose with style and panache?

It’s an interesting question and one that idealists will answer with the latter option – pragmatists, meanwhile, would suggest that winning in sport is, ultimately, all that matters.

Coming up with an answer, or at least a resolution that satisfies those on both sides of the fence, is the conundrum facing English cricket, as the game-changing ‘Bazball’ approach deployed by their test team continues to come under scrutiny.

Ben Stokes’ team lost in the test series against India early in 2024, with pundits pointing the finger of blame at the team’s ultra aggressive, attacking style – an accusation that Stokes and his players have been keen to reject.

Would you rather lose meekly or go down fighting? That’s a question international sides have been forced to confront when playing India, an outstanding team on home soil who are unbeaten in test series since 2013.

England chose to go down fighting, with their risk-reward style applauded by some and lambasted by others. But while there’s no shame in losing an away series in India, there are fears that the Bazball machine is just starting to run low on power.

So has Bazball been a success or failure for English cricket?

What is Bazball?

If you’re completely in the dark as to what Bazball actually is, here’s a quick recap.

In early 2022, English cricket – specifically its test team – was in the doldrums. Recently thrashed 0-4 in the Ashes series in Australia, England headed to the Caribbean, where they lost a three-game contest against a West Indies side that is far from their all-conquering best of the 1970s and 80s.

Without an identity or a settled starting eleven, change was needed. The ECB appointed Rob Key as a sort of gatekeeper for English cricket, who in turn handed the job of coaching the test team to Brendan McCullum, a man known throughout the sport as ‘Baz’.

McCullum started work alongside his new captain, Ben Stokes, and they both agreed that England needed to be more aggressive and proactive in their approach – forcing results in test matches, rather than hoping that victory would present itself….even if that meant dancing with the possibility of defeat.

Ironically, the first series England faced under the new regime was against New Zealand, McCullum’s home country and one packed with excellent test cricketers.

But Stokes and co blew the Kiwis away, integrating T20 style batting and aggressive captaincy in a way never seen before in test cricket. The writer Andrew Miller, of the influential Cricinfo, labelled the new style ‘Bazball’ as a nod to McCullum’s growing influence on cricket both in England and, by virtue of the buzz around his style, around the world.

What is the Bazball Strategy?

Although a considerable paraphrasing, the Ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu declared that one of the most effective tactics in war is to do the unexpected – putting your opponent in a position that they don’t want to find themselves in.

Whether McCullum and Stokes are avid readers of texts from the 5th Century BC only they know, but there’s no doubt that Bazball takes its central tenets from that incredibly influential text.

They want their batsmen to compile a big innings score, but to do so quickly – why? Because it allows them to have more time in the field bowling at the opposition, which in turn enables them to control the game.

There’s also been unique fields set for opposing batsmen and some near-the-knuckle declarations – resisting the urge to play out for a draw, one of the themes of Bazball is to try and force a result….for better or worse.

“For some people, their ledger is runs, wickets, wins, losses. The skipper and mine is not that. It is heart, soul, commitment,” McCullum has said.

Actions speak louder than words, and McCullum and Stokes have stayed true to their principles in their team selection, bringing in attacking batsmen and demanding that they play their natural game – without too much of a concern if such aggression costs them their wicket.

“Stokesy and myself are aligned, try and free guys up as much as possible from the burden that comes with playing international sport and the fear of failure. Sport is meant to be fun and entertaining.”

That’s evident in the opening partnership of Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, who have been backed to the hilt by their captain and coach and rewarded them with match-winning innings’ accordingly.

New Zealand were the first team to face Bazball at close quarters in the summer of 2022, and they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.

In truth, it was an inauspicious start to the series for both teams, with the first test seeing paltry scores of just 132 and 141 on the board. The Kiwis rallied with 285 – setting England a sizable 277 to win. Bazball was about to get its first real examination.

The fact that England chased down the total with the minimum of fuss – the third-highest run chase in history at Lord’s, was telling of the new-found confidence that Stokes and McCullum had instilled in their players….remember, this was the same team that had been so abject just months prior in Australia and the Caribbean.

Highest Winning Run Chases at Lord’s

info via espncricinfo.com

The second test at Trent Bridge was a run-fest – more than 1,600 were scored, all told. New Zealand set England 299 to win: a total that once would have been unheard of, with the English batsmen battening down the hatches and scrapping desperately for a draw.

But not under Bazball. They chased it down in 50 overs exactly: Stokes and Jonny Bairstow scoring at a rate faster than a run-a-ball in their totals of 75 and 136 respectively, in an innings that featured some 36 boundaries and 12 sixes.

Once upon a time, scoring 300 in 50 overs would have been out of the question in one-day internationals – Bazball had reinvented the wheel of test cricket.

Reflecting on that historic run chase – the highest-ever in a test at Trent Bridge, Stokes said:

“The fact that we went out and decided that we were going to chase this down and were willing to lose it showed the world what we were about. This is how England is going to be playing cricket now.”

What is England’s Record Under Bazball?

Incidentally, England won the third test of that series against a shellshocked New Zealand too – chasing down 296, with Bairstow blasting 71 runs off 44 balls, in a remarkable innings that simply became par for the course for Bazball’s summer of love in 2022.

But how have things being going since? Pretty darn well, by all accounts, which makes the recent criticism all the more bizarre to understand.

England have played five full series’ around the globe since Bazball’s inauguration against the Kiwis; winning two, drawing two and losing against India, arguably the best test team in the world in their own conditions.

After beating New Zealand, England had another engagement in the summer of 2022: the fifth and decisive test against India, which had been delayed a year after a host of Indian players were struck down during the original series.

Four games, four wins for Bazball – India blasted aside by an extraordinary performance from England, who chased down a mind-boggling 378; that man Bairstow once again in the runs in what was the eighth highest run chase in the entire history of test cricket.

Since then. England have played in five test series’:

• • England in South Africa – WON
  • England in Pakistan – WON
  • England in New Zealand – DREW
  • England hosted Australia – DREW
  • England in India – LOST

A pretty decent record then, and one accentuated by the fact that four of the five series’ have been played on international soil – in the case of Pakistan and India, in conditions wholly alien to those that played their formative cricket in England.

Historically, England have a poor record in India – it’s more than a decade since they won a series there, proving that dry, spinning pitches are the kryptonite for English cricket….Bazball or no Bazball.

At the time of writing, England had played 22 individual test matches in the Bazball era:

That’s 14 wins, seven defeats and – true to the Bazball philosophy – just a solitary draw in this era of forcing a result, for better or worse.

For context, here’s England’s 21 test match results prior to Stokes and McCullum taking charge before the summer of 2022:

Although the opposition has changed, and so to the players, over the past five years or so of English cricket, the conclusion is clear: Bazball has been a success in turning England into a winning machine.

They say too that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The idea of Bazball is to free up players, giving them the confidence to express themselves and almost play on auto pilot – the Valhalla of sporting excellence.

And there’s no better way to contextualise that than when looking at the scores England have posted when batting last. Here’s an image that shows their highest-ever run chases in history:

For context, England have been playing test cricket for nearly 150 years, and yet their highest-ever run chase – and three of their eight biggest – have come in barely 18 months of Bazball.

The upshot is that England are now winning games that, probabilistically speaking, they wouldn’t have had a prayer of winning in the 150 years prior to Stokes and McCullum taking charge. Since that fateful summer of 2022, England’s average batting run rate is 4.76 an over. The next best is Australia with 3.56 – so, over the course of a 90-over day, it means England could score 428 runs….100+ more than anyone else in world cricket.

Whatever your personal metrics of success, you’d be hard-pressed to argue against that.

What is the Main Criticism of Bazball?

When you commit to a philosophy of all-out attack, there’s very little wriggle-room – it’s simply all or nothing.

Which brings us nicely full circle to England’s tour of India in January and February 2024, played on pitches and in conditions that favoured a more flexible approach to run-getting and wicket-taking.

And that’s perhaps the main criticism of Bazball: while a rudimentary grasp of Microsoft Excel can make results and records look nice, the actual minutiae of test cricket is such that knowing when to attack – and when to be more conservative – is still the order of the day.

Critics of the Bazball approach will also transport you back to the first Ashes test of the summer in 2023. England declared their first innings on 393/8 after less than a day’s play – an ultra-aggressive decision, and one undoubtedly designed to win the early mind games over the Australians.

The problem is that Australia, as they tend to be, were up to the task, posting a slower first innings total of 386 and all but eliminating England’s perceived early advantage. Had Stokes allowed his batsmen to carry on and get closer to, say, 450 or even 500, it could have made all the difference in a game that they ultimately went on to lose.

As you can probably imagine, sections of the media were in uproar about Stokes’ declaration – some, indeed, have still to be won over by Bazball at all, despite the positive results that are clear for all to see.

Their batting has been labelled ‘reckless’ and ‘shambolic’ by various judges, while Guardian writer Barney Ronay effectively accused Stokes and McCullum of using cultish, brainwashing tactics on their players. Sir Geoffrey Boycott, a man so opinionated that he’d refuse to sit on the fence in a fence-sitting competition, claimed England had ‘lost the plot’ in India.

After that galling defeat, even the politically-neutral Michael Atherton was moved enough to be critical – albeit in the most gentile terms.

“In the end, they’ve just not quite been good enough. There’s kind of a lingering regret over the opportunities they’ve missed.”

Oh, and when the word ‘Bazball’ was added to the Collins English Dictionary in 2023, Australian batsman Marnus Labuschagne labelled the decision as ‘garbage’.

Everyone’s a critic – not that Stokes gives a hoot.

“You will have good days and bad days, good games and bad games. Going out there and sticking to the way that we know allows us to play our best cricket is what we constantly focus on. That’s what we’ll be doing in this game, the next game and other games too.”

The True Bazball Effect

Fun and entertainment: those are just two of the words that have been used throughout the Bazball era.

The manner in which England go about their business confirms that they’re paying more than just lip service to the concept too – which is making them more, you guessed it, fun and entertaining to watch.

In the long run, it will be fascinating to see how much of an impact that has on participation levels in cricket in the UK – a younger generation invigorated by Bazball, rather than the stoic, turgid days of batting for hours on end at a clip of two runs an over.

The stats suggest that the summer of 2022 was transformative for English cricket. Compare the participation levels in grassroots cricket in England in 2019, before the global health crisis, and 2022, and we see that the numbers of people playing the game rose from 292,200 to 353,000.

In 2023, more than 2,000 new teams – including 717 for girls or women – were formed on UK soil, while more than 30,000 people from inner-city areas decided to give cricket a go.

The merits, or otherwise, of Bazball can be argued until we’re all blue in the face. But the positivity that the approach is spreading through English cricket is a transformation that could last for decades to come.