Bazball and the 2023 men’s cricket Ashes series

I recently discovered a new word – Bazball!

According to Wikipedia: “Bazball is an informal cricketing term first coined by sport journalists and bloggers during the 2022 English cricket season referring to the style of play of the England national cricket team in Test Cricket (red-ball) matches. It was developed after the appointments of Brendon McCullum (whose nickname is ‘Baz’) as Test cricket head coach and Ben Stokes as England Test cricket captain by English cricket managing director Rob Key in May 2022. The Bazball style and mindset is said to have an emphasis on taking positive decisions in attack and defence, whether batting or in the field. Many of these skills and strategies were first developed in playing One Day International (white-ball) and Twenty20 (T20) matches.”

About the Ashes now in progress (in fact, the first two matches have already been played), it has long been eagerly awaited, not least by me, especially due to England’s remarkable turnaround in fortunes in the last year and a bit, after being in the doldrums, and this has been largely put down to playing a Bazball style of cricket, and one outcome is now finding themselves riding high. As for the Australians, while not the greatest team in my lifetime, they are deserved world champions in the longer form of the game, having recently beaten the much-fancied Indians in the game to decide who will be champions. Not only is the Ashes the pinnacle when it comes to cricket, that clash because of what the teams had recently achieved has additional fascination. When the series is over, I plan to blog on how I saw it all went. Right now, it is looking uphill for England who lost their first two matches. But it was entertaining, with remarkable individual performances from both sides, and while the games could have gone either way, with each taking turns to be in the ascendancy, Australia were overall the better team.

I was also intrigued reading an article titled: “Bazball: How England’s cricket revolution points us back to God”. The author sets the scene with comments like “once his team embraced a more childlike love for the game, untainted by fear of failure, they were able to relax and play with freedom, which led to stronger performances” and relating this to a theological reflection concerning how Christians should approach life. He ends: “‘Bazball’ may not be perfect. But it does offer us a fresh glimpse of how God designed both sport and his wider creation. We are made to be a people who are full of joy, taking pleasure in their gifts, secure in their identity and living fearlessly before their maker”.

For those who follow this beautiful game, the way England played, taking on as they did the Bazball mindset, has been fascinating and exciting and, inevitably when they were winning and doing so in style, they attracted many supporters as a result of adopting this approach. But now they are losing they have attracted criticism, especially from “experts”. A number of things can be pointed out where maybe this was not the right approach. I don’t think they should have declared their first innings in the First Test, or gone after the short-pitched bowling in the first innings in the Second Test. Putting aside the “unsporting” run out of Jonny Bairstow in the Second Innings of the Second Test, I can’t help thinking, besides quality performances by individuals both sides, Australia were more intelligent in their approach to playing.

I have long loved TMS and confess to have been following some of its live commentary during these last two tests, while supposedly working at my computer, and catching up with action at its end of the day podcasts – something the BBC does exceedingly well. One aspect I like is “View from the boundary”, when one of the TMS team, typically Jonathan Agnew, interviews a celebrity who is watching the game being played, during the lunch interlude. I am no fan of the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, just as I was no fan of John Major, another former Prime Minister, but recognise both understand, appreciate and love the game, and I enjoyed Rishi Sunak being interviewed by Jonathan Agnew. I found among other things we were much in agreement when it comes to deciding a time to Bazball and a time not to Bazball.

It is a rather tall order for England to come from 2-0 down to win the Ashes 3-2, but they have the quality and character to do so. What cannot be denied, it has been thrilling cricket to follow and while I so want our boys to win, I also want the best team to win. I can’t tell them how to play, but would say: while Bazball is a great idea, there is also a need to learn lessons from their two defeats.

In a peculiar way, the Jonny Bairstow dismissal, the rights and wrongs of which continue to be debated, is not unrelated to Bazball. Playing with gay abandon is one thing but foolishness and arrogance is something else and, like it or not, Bairstow got himself out by walking out of his crease before over was called, and Australia played according to the rules by stumping him. I hope and expect England to rise to the occasion in the Third Test and what will be seen at the end as an outstanding series of great cricket.