By Matt Hardy
England can bemoan the rain and they can bemoan the slow over rate throughout the fourth Test, but neither of those are the reason Australia have retained the Ashes.
Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and England as a whole can only look at themselves for yet another failure to secure the urn at home. The wait is now eight years.
From the early declaration on the opening day of the opening Test at Edgbaston to the countless missed chances and the run chases that needed calm and stability rather than headless hitting, it hasn’t really worked.
Bazball hope
So, when in the fourth Test having allowed yourselves to go 2-0 down in the five-match series, England praying for the rain to stop in the hope of taking the series to a decider at the Oval this week is desperate.
Because the reality is this: England lost the Edgbaston Test rather than Australia winning it. And at Lord’s England threw away runs unnecessarily.
This Ashes is the second series in the era of Bazball, after New Zealand several months ago, where England have not picked up a series win having had a supreme record across the globe prior to then.
And of course the Ashes matters; it is widely seen as the pinnacle of Test cricket. It has the history, the pedigree, the rivalry. But it’s more than that this time around.
Bazball is an incredible style of cricket, there’s no doubt about that. It has taken what was seen as the dying format of international cricket and made it attractive again. It’s made all five days of a Test, every one of the 15 sessions in a match, interesting.
There’s no denying an early declaration, Zak Crawley’s incredible 189 and the artificially manifested acrimony over Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal at Lord’s have given Bazball even more momentum.
At the weekend, Kumar Sangakkara told how kids in Manchester had approached him to talk about Bazball, and other ex-pros have stated similar.
Movement
Bazball is a movement, a niche political party trying to infiltrate the establishment. Cricket can be boring at the highest level, and Bazball is the disrupter.
So this five-match battle – which will either conclude with a draw or Australia’s first series win in England since 2001 – is just a stepping stone on the pilgrimage to eternal Bazball.
It is understood that McCullum was also offered the white-ball job last year when both positions were available.
But he chose the Test job, the blank slate. He took the reins from an operation that had sunk to one win in 17 matches and gave it life. Bazball is more than results, it’s a reason to enjoy cricket again.
Losing is horrible, and fans and teams alike never want to be on the losing end. But what if England lost every game for the next decade?
Would you rather lose Bazball style, where there’s entertainment and hope, or suffer under a regime of foreshadowing pain and disappointment? It’s easy, isn’t it.
So this series loss will obviously go down as a loss, and one which Stokes and his side will struggle to take given how they threw two Tests away before deciding to execute operation Bazball effectively.
But it’s more than results. It is a fundamental redefinition of what Test cricket is; a recalibration of the five-day game some thought would disappear before the turn of the next decade.
The Ashes have been a brutal lesson in playing against some of the best players in the world, but England cannot lose sight of the bigger picture. Because if this series has not ignited a love for the oldest and most traditional style of cricket in operation, what will?
