In defence of Mr Basil Ball

I know, I know. It would probably be wise to wait for the test to be over to write this, but I wanted to get it out now at what I think might be the peak of doubt in Bazball. Also, it’ll be really funny to look back on if I am wrong.

Firstly, I think we need to reset expectations.

Australia are the best team in the world and the reigning test world champions.

England were until recently one of the worst teams in the world, bottom of the test world championship and managing to score negative points in series. This England team is that same team.

Considering that England’s current performance — losing a nailbiter and still very much in a match — represents a significant achievement.

Secondly, I think we need to strip away some of the post rationalisation that happened after the first test.

The first test was two overs away from being a draw. If at any point England had been even an iota less Bazball in their batting it would have been a draw. That includes the declaration. And the match was definitely there to be won, so a draw would have been bad.

We didn’t win because we dropped a number of catches, because we gave up a result changing number of extras, and because Ali injured his finger and neither Stokes nor Anderson were fully fit and winning a cricket match is more-or-less impossible when 3 out of 5 of your bowlers are injured.

And even so we got to the point where Australia were 227/8 needing another 55. We shouldn’t lose from there. Cummins, Lyon and an unused Hazelwood shouldn’t be able to knock that off.

So England’s bowling lost the first test, not Bazball. Specifically our lack of aggression against the tail, our shoddy fielding, our lack of ideas with the old ball, and our injuries.

Now let’s talk about the current test.

Obviously losing six wickets for 47 runs in a day (well a morning) is bad. But in the circumstances it wasn’t a disaster.

It left Australia with a 91 run first innings lead. With Lyon injured and the pitch not looking all that scary you feel like England could chase a big target in the fourth innings. 400, even 450 really isn’t out of the question. I’m sure England would rather it be less, but it wouldn’t faze them if it was that much.

So that makes the game simple: take 10 wickets as quickly as possible for as few runs as possible and provided they don’t score more than about 300 odd there’s still a chance of winning if there is time to win. But with rain around time is of the essence. Fail and you have to bat out a day and a half or so for a draw, probably a bit less with rain and Australia’s excruciatingly slow over rate.

That’s doable. That’s a path to victory. And it’s not even that huge a risk of defeat. And looked at like that, even with the benefit of hindsight batting fast even if it means losing wickets quickly makes sense.

Of course now Australia are in a winning position and we are not. But once again that has nothing to do with anything England have done with the bat. It is because once again our bowling has very quickly run out of ideas and lacked intensity, have failed to review enough (really?), and once again our fielding has been appalling.

Collapse and all (and I realise I’m going to look very silly if we collapse in the 4th for 45 runs) England’s batters have done enough to win this match, we’ve lost it in the field.

Which brings me to my thesis. England aren’t struggling because they are too Bazball with the bat, they are struggling because they are not Bazball enough with the bowling.

Bazball is not just about aggression. If it was then it wasn’t invented by Stokes and McCullum but by Afridi in 2010 (another player blamed for things that weren’t his fault — Afridi came in to bat in that match at 5–83 and went on to hit the second highest score, and yet we were told it was his batting and approach that was Pakistan’s problem).

Bazball is more sophisticated than Afridiball. In the Japanese board game Go there is the concept of sente and gote. At any given time one player will have sente — the initiative — and will be able to develop their strategy and tactics. The other player will be forced into playing gote — reactively — and will be unable to develop their own plan. Having sente is vital, without it all you can really do is damage limitation. For that reason players will often play a tenuki move: a reckless and sometimes losing move, but a move which seizes sente back from their opponent.

Bazball is about doing everything in your power to keep sente, even if it means a string of tenuki moves. They are worth it because for as long as you have the initiative all your opponent can do is react to you and limit your damage — they can’t play their own game.

So my thesis: Bazball applied to bowling is my favourite part of Bazball — the insane umbrella fields, bringing on Harry Brook — innovative bowling attacks can retain sente and prevent the batsmen from batting how they want to. But while England are fully committed to Bazball in their batting they only flirt with it in their bowling. Sometimes they do it and it is glorious, but all too quickly they go back to what is conventional. And all too quickly what is conventional becomes flat. It becomes gote. And that’s why we’re losing.

Also please stop dropping Khawaja.