Bazball for beginners

As the battle for the Ashes rages on, the English cricket team has developed a strategy called “Bazball”. A test match is meant to be played at a slow tempo with the batsmen attempting to tire the bowlers, while taking minimal risk - but Bazball is almost the complete opposite. Named after the English coach Brendon McCullum (nicknamed “Baz”), it was designed to allow the English batsmen to express themselves on the field and play with an unburdened mindset. Baz, himself was an aggressive cricketer who stayed true to his style

across all formats of the game.

In the period before the Bazball era, England had had a run of poor results. In the period between June 2021 and May 2022 the team had a total of one win, eight losses and five draws.This season the team headed by captain Ben Stokes, have been able to win ten of their twelve matches. The English team is also heading the charts for the best win-loss ratio which is a major improvement. Much of this can be credited to their new approach to the game.

With the rise of the T20 era, the game of cricket has become more attacking as a whole but no team has been as attacking as the English side. The emergence of the shorter version of the game provides room for innovation in test cricket, with a completely different skill-set required. I for one think that teams like India with a lot of talent beginning to emerge in the shorter formats of the game could think about switching to more of an attacking strategy in test cricket. England has also had major success over some of the larger cricketing nations

like India, New Zealand and Pakistan, proving that Bazball has the potential to go far in test cricket. It is also great entertainment for those non-purists who were worried about five days of boring cricket.

In conclusion, it will be interesting to see if Bazball has a chance against one of the best cricket teams in the world, on the greatest stage in world cricket, the Ashes. In other words, is Bazball really effective? Is it Bazball or Bustball?