Test cricket has been played for nearly 150 years. In that time, there have been several dominant sides. Australia in the immediate aftermath of the two World Wars, England in the 1950s, West Indies from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, and Australia for a decade from 1999 spring to mind fairly quickly. Each of those sides had formidable bowling attacks, none more so than West Indies, with their four horsemen of the apocalypse.
The batting was pretty useful too. Australia in the 1930s could call on Sir Donald Bradman, Stan McCabe and Bill Ponsford, each a contender for their all-time XI. England in the 1950s had Len Hutton, Peter May, Denis Compton and Tom Graveney. The dominant West Indies had Sir Vivian Richards, Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, while Steve Waugh’s all-conquering side could call on Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist, in addition to the Waugh twins.
The current England team doesn’t have a frightening bowling attack. As great as they’ve been for well over a decade, this Ashes series has shown that Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad are some way past their best. Father Time is readying for the retirement-tap on the shoulder. There is no spinner comparable to Bill O’Reilly, Clarrie Grimmett, Jim Laker or Shane Warne. And apart from Joe Root and Ben Stokes, no one in the batting line-up would be part of any discussions on batting greatness.
Besides, only an idiot would call this England team great just yet. Such labels are bestowed on teams only after they’ve won consistently in all conditions for the best part of a decade. But the numbers already paint a stark picture of the influence that the Ben Stokes-Brendon McCullum combination has had on the way that England play Test cricket.
When McCullum took charge as Test coach in May 2022, England had won just one of their previous 17 Tests. In those matches, the batters had scored at 2.89 runs an over, not tardy, but hardly a rate that would have the punters rushing through the turnstiles. In the 15 matches that the McCullum-Stokes duo has presided over, there have been 11 wins. The runs have come at 4.77 an over, faster than the mighty West Indies scored in ODIs (4.52) in the 1980s.
The effect has been felt most off the field. Suddenly, there is a buzz around Test cricket again. The crowds have, in any case, flocked to Ashes Tests in the last two decades. But the advent of what has been termed Bazball has enthused those crowds to such an extent that the behaviour – both good and bad – is almost similar to raucous football support.
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What Bazball has also done is give the team enormous belief. At Edgbaston in July 2022, India set them a target of 378 to win the game and square a series that had been halted with England 1-2 down 10 months earlier. In the team’s previous avatar, they would have scrapped for survival. Under Stokes and McCullum, they went at the target full tilt, breezing past at nearly five an over, with seven wickets in hand.
This Lord’s Test offered almost a repeat. It didn’t matter that the score was 45-4 when Stokes came to the middle. There was little thought of digging trenches or stonewalling as Stokes and Ben Duckett got England back into the contest. The 132 they added came at four an over, and could scarcely be called a rearguard action.
What followed was simply astonishing, and the best possible advertisement for Bazball. When Jonny Bairstow was controversially dismissed, England were 193-6, and Stokes was on 62 off 126 balls. It had been a restrained and watchful innings, with four fours and a straight six off Travis Head. But after Bairstow’s dismissal, to a chorus of boos even from the Members’ Stand, it was as if a switch was flicked.
In the 88 balls he faced after that, Stokes smashed eight sixes and five fours, while adding 93 to his score. The 108-run stand with Broad came at nearly a run a ball, and it’s no exaggeration at all to say that Australia were sweating bullets until Stokes finally miscued one off Josh Hazlewood.
Just to put things into perspective, West Indies scored at 3.15 an over during their decade of dominance in the 1980s. That was even with Richards, maker of a 56-ball Test hundred, in the ranks. Between their defeat of West Indies in the Caribbean in 1995 and the loss of the Ashes for the first time in a generation in 2005, Australia rattled along at 3.41 an over.
In 2009, in the match that saw India take over the No.1 ranking in Test cricket, Virender Sehwag’s 284 not out allowed India to pile up 443-1 in 79 overs of play. More than three decades earlier, Roy “Kid Cement” Fredericks had smashed a 145-ball 169 against the fastest Australian attack ever on a lightning-quick WACA pitch in Perth. Bazball is nothing new, in the same way that a wheel with shiny chrome spokes is still just a wheel. But no one can deny the electrifying impact it has had on Test match crowds, and a format considered to be on life support.
At the same time, let’s not forget the series scoreline. It’s 2-0 to Australia. It’s not like they have dawdled along either. In this series, Australia have scored at 3.31 an over, and imposed themselves at key moments. Head, in particular, has been outstanding at wresting the initiative.
But the standout batter so far has been Usman Khawaja, whose 300 runs in the series have seen him occupy the crease for 775 balls. There’s more than one way to peel an orange, and while Bazball may have won hearts, it’s Khawaja’s true grit and old-world methods that have given Australia a lead that has only been overhauled once before in nearly a century and a half of Ashes series.