The first impression of a particular event or moment can have a lasting effect on your mind. At Lord’s, in 2022, James Anderson beat Tom Latham on the outside edge with his very first delivery. Having watched the ever-enduring pace bowler over a couple of decades, that particular outcome seemed like a given. But there was something else that seemed unique: England’s ultra-attacking mindset under the new regime of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum. On occasions, England had five slips and a gully in place.
Under Stokes, it suddenly didn’t seem like a team that had won a solitary Test in their last 17 games. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that England traversed through a few tricky moments and emerged victorious in that game. Two years later, England’s aggressive mindset with both bat and ball, or popularly known as Bazball, has become one of the major talking points among the cricket cognoscenti or general public at large. None more so than during the last week when England recovered from a precarious position to usurp India in Hyderabad.
England were behind by 190 runs and yet they managed to not just claw their way back into the game but also pipped India by 28 runs. When faced with a herculean task, they responded by attacking a whopping 54 per cent of the deliveries bowled to them in the Test match (source – cricviz data).
The hero of England’s batting effort was Ollie Pope. The Surrey batter was averaging a mere 19 in India before the ongoing Test series. He also began the tour on an inauspicious note, scoring one in the first innings. But in the second innings it felt as if he had come out to bat wearing a different mask. So, how did Pope transform himself from being called a ‘sitting duck’ against spin to playing one of the finest Test knocks in India in this century?
For starters, Pope seemed to trust his defence much more in the second innings. In the first essay, it was crystal clear that Pope was committing on the front foot and lunging out to deliveries. The track also slowed down a bit as the match progressed, which helped Pope to pick spinners off the deck. It is a testament to his resilience that he stuck to his method while defending for long periods. Pope’s nimble hands also turned out to be one of the nuts and bolts of his game-changing knock. There were times when he adjusted to the turn off the deck and manoeuvered the ball into the gaps by using his hands and playing low.
A case in point was the last ball off the 23rd over bowled by Ravindra Jadeja. Pope opened the bat face at the last moment and drove one to deep point for a single. Just zoom on the replays and it could be noticed that Pope had perhaps committed himself to playing more through covers. That last minute adjustment was made possible because of his quick-moving hands. Another factor that stood out in Pope’s batting was he protected the inside-half of the bat.
There was more to Pope’s batting against spin than just rotating the strike and trusting his defence. He took on India’s spinners with a range of sweeps, reverse sweeps and the occasional lap shot. It would require a batter to have full conviction in his method to play in that fashion against the formidable Indian spinners. He seemed to gauge the length reasonably quickly in order to play those shots. Basically, Pope made his own luck by playing high-risk strokes on a challenging wicket and won the game of cat and mouse against the spin troika.
But if you scratch the outside layers of sweeps and reverse sweeps or Tom Hartley’s seven-for on Test debut, you will notice the work done behind the scenes by the English management. Under Stokes and McCullum, England have played a fearless brand of cricket. Even when England have found themselves well behind in the game, they have stuck to their gameplan.
So, how did McCullum and Stokes go about creating such an environment, where young players like Crawley, Ben Duckett or Pope started to find their groove in Test cricket? After England won the Oval Test versus South Africa in 2022, McCullum gave his take on what he tried to bring to the side. “Sometimes when you’re playing this game … you start off as a kid and it’s so much fun, and you get thrust into the bright lights and the big cities and the expectations are thrown on you, the enjoyment can go out of the game, and it can start to lead to negativity seeping in.
“My job is to ensure that we’re always reminding ourselves that this job is meant to be the greatest time of our life, being a cricketer at the highest level, and trying to create memories that you look back over in time. That’s the results, but it’s also the fun and the camaraderie that you build up. Hopefully we’ve been able to achieve that.”
It is just the kind of team atmosphere that fosters creativity and joy among the players to go out and play freely. It isn’t just the batters who have played with a sense of bravado. Since the duo have taken over as the coach and captain, three English spinners have picked a five-for on Test debut: Will Jacks, Rehan Ahmed and Hartley. English spinners ripping through the cream of opposition in the subcontinent! Perhaps we are living on a different planet.
It is true that Stokes’s tactics to use the Test debutant over Joe Root against the left-handed Yashasvi Jaiswal in the first innings was hard to fathom. But once Stokes decided to start with Hartley, he backed him to the hilt. Hartley returned the favour in the second innings.
“It didn’t go how he wanted [on day one] but I was committed to giving him that long spell,” Stokes said after the match. “Whether or not that is a big reason he’s got seven-for I don’t know. It is just a lesson to quite a lot of people that if you are saying stuff to people and want them to believe in it, you have really got to back it up by your actions.”
The difference between the first and second innings performance was that Hartley bowled with much better control. He bowled within the line of the stumps and mostly around the good length area. Hartley also has the ability to turn a few at pace and extracts a bit of bounce. In the DRS era, left-arm spinners who bowl quicker through the air tend to do better in India. Having said that, it doesn’t mean a spinner has to dart the ball at 93-94kph. Somewhere in the second innings, Hartley found the right pace – mostly around 87-89kph – and also extracted a bit of turn.
England don’t just have Hartley in their ranks but they have also picked another rookie spinner in Shoaib Bashir. The off-spinner, who wasn’t a part of the squad in the first Test due to visa problems, also can get a few to turn at pace. With Joe Root also having similar characteristics, England do have more firepower this time around to match the famed Indian spinners in their own backyard.
On the face of it, Indian spinners are miles ahead in terms of pedigree and quality. But for the prevailing conditions in India, England seem to have done more than enough research. Stokes’s field placements too were mostly proactive in the second innings. To illustrate the point further, when Root shifted to bowling from round the wicket to Rohit Sharma, the cover field was left open. But for Hartley bowling from round the wicket, that field position was plugged.
Whatever happens in the rest of the Test series, Stokes and McCullum duet seems to be on some kind of a mission to build a legacy, where the England team is celebrated not for their achievements but also style of play.
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