How Bazball alters one of the fundamental truths of Test cricket
The genius of England’s approach is that it takes the traditional consequences of dismissal out of the equation
Sambit Bal14-Feb-2024Joe Root has left the crease. It has been nine balls since he arrived. England have shaved 154 runs off their 399-run target, their stiffest in the Bazball era, in just under 31 overs, 87 of those ransacked on the fourth morning. Of the three wickets lost along the way, one belongs to the nightwatcher, who helped himself to five sumptuous boundaries.Root is England’s second most prolific Test batter. He started the Test with more runs than the whole Indian XI, and in the first innings he has gone past 1000 Test runs in India. It is a body of work built on traditionally sound Test-match craft, and in another age it would be natural to expect a batter of Root’s pedigree to bed down and take the chase deep on a pitch still comfortable for batting.But they don’t do it that way these days, and certainly not Root, who has embraced the new mode with the adroitness of a late-life convert. The last nine balls to him have already fetched 16 runs, beginning with a reverse-swept four off the first ball, from R Ashwin. The third delivery Root faced produced another attempted reverse sweep that ballooned off the glove for a fortuitous four. The seventh was belted for a six over long-off. Now he is down the pitch, eyeing the leg-side fence, which has been left unguarded.Related
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But Ashwin is bowling round the wicket. The ball has been pushed wide, and it’s going away with the arm. Root is also deceived in the flight, but he is so committed to the shot that bailing out is not an option. He finishes the wildest of flails with his bat over his shoulder, pointing towards square leg, head tilted towards the off side, and with his eyes shut. It is a horror shot that has sliced the ball up towards backward point, and the horror is fleetingly visible, as a reflex reaction, on Root’s face.To suggest that this stroke encapsulated the essence of Bazball – you hit many and miss a few – would be telling only half the story. The reward that comes with the risk is just a part of it, but what enables the approach is that failure comes with no recrimination, and in that lies its real genius. In another age, this stroke would have brought howls of indignation from fans, and analysts would have zeroed in on it as a trigger for England’s collapse.That none of that happened was an illustration of not merely how England under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have re-engineered their approach to Test batting but also how profoundly they have influenced the game’s discourse. It wasn’t only Root and the England team who shrugged it off as part of the design, but such dismissals from England’s batters have now been so normalised that this one barely registered as a misadventure to those watching. It was a demonstration of England’s success in co-opting mass perception in their repositioning of Test batting as an audacious and gallant pursuit of fast runs irrespective of outcome.This is a fundamental upending of the texture of Test cricket. In that every ball carries the risk of dismissal, batting is the most fraught of sporting endeavours. Test batting is based on the principle of minimising risks. The loss of a wicket, particularly of a top-order batter, is a massive and decisive event in Tests, unlike in the shorter formats, where the restriction on the number of overs makes batting resources seem relatively abundant.Zak Crawley has epitomised the potential of Bazball in this series•Getty ImagesThe liberating effect of the removal – or reduced impact – of the consequence of dismissals is evident in the range of strokeplay in T20 cricket. If the stumps are out of the equation, the crease can become a reference point for positioning to take aim. Being caught is merely an occupational hazard. Hitting on the up is a routine option.It isn’t that good-length balls cannot be driven, or balls cannot be hit square if they are within the line of the stumps, but Test batting is calibrated towards preservation. This gives bowlers larger margins in Test cricket. They can construct spells, formulate plans, set catchers in place, and string together sequences of balls in the knowledge that the construct and rhythms of Test cricket allow them the space to build towards dismissals. Batting is a process of continual risk assessment, but standards of safety are set much higher in Tests, which grants bowlers greater allowance for deviation from the perfect length or line, because batters tend to wait for balls close enough to drive, or short enough to cut or pull.Root’s ten-ball innings in Visakhapatnam might have seemed reckless from the beginning, and Harry Brook’s baseball-style hitting might give the appearance of an absolute disregard of the basic principles of batting, but England’s new batting philosophy is based on reorienting the mind.By removing the fear of consequences and reprisal, the England management have not only unlocked scoring opportunities that always existed but not always been accessed, they have presented their opponents a different challenge. Insouciant strokeplayers have existed through the history of the game, and in Virender Sehwag lies the example of a batter who achieved devastating success by treating every ball as a run-making opportunity, but rarely has a team as a whole adopted this as their approach.Zak Crawley has improved his average by nearly eight runs in the Bazball era, not by swinging wildly but by pouncing more aggressively on scoring opportunities. No one this series has left Jasprit Bumrah as assuredly as Crawley did, and no one has capitalised on marginal errors of length as well as he has done. He is the only top-order batter not to have been dismissed by Bumrah in the series so far. In the second Test he took eight boundaries off him, while the rest managed nine.Just as Crawley has used his reach to maximise driving opportunities, Ben Duckett, his opening partner, has pounced on the slightest offering of width to employ his most profitable shot, the cut. It’s a small sample size but Duckett, who was sidelined after four unimpressive Tests in 2016, which yielded him an average of 15.71, has scored over 1100 runs at nearly 50 since he was rehabilitated as an enforcer by the current management. The most remarkable jump is in his strike rate: to 90.06 from 57.89.
The table above is proof that England haven’t embraced madness (every batter, including Root, has improved their average, despite scoring faster) but rather a method designed to optimise their batting potential and to disrupt their opponents’ plans. Alert to punish every lapse, they almost systematically target bowlers who they consider weak links. In Birmingham against India, where they mounted their highest chase in this era, Shardul Thakur was taken apart for 113 runs off 18 overs; in the Ashes, Scott Boland, who came into the series with an economy rate of 2.31, was plundered for nearly five an over; Mohammed Siraj has gone for 5.70 in Tests, and Mukesh Kumar, playing his first home Test in Vishakhapatnam, was never allowed to settle.It’s unfamiliar territory for India on more than one count.In recent times they have been used to rolling teams over on sharp turners, like they did with England in 2020-21. On traditional Indian wickets – like the ones in this series – they have always possessed the batting power to bury their opponents under the weight of runs, like with England in 2016-17, who lost two Tests by large margins despite scoring 400 and 477 in the first innings.This time, dishing out rank turners carries the risk of elevating the threat the rookie England spin attack poses to the feeblest Indian batting line-up in a home series in living memory. Conversely, flat pitches can boost England’s fast-scoring potential, while India’s own batting so far has been incapable of putting matches decisively out of reach.India are up against an idea that seems to challenge the fundamentals of Test cricket: a clutch of batters who give the appearance of kamikaze fighters, even if they are not, and a team that has managed to take the pressure off itself by creating the perception that they are somehow winning even when they are losing.All of these have come together to serve up a fascinating five-Test series between two imperfect teams.