By Matt Hardy
With Dhruv Jurel’s safe shot for two runs on Monday in Ranchi, India inflicted a first ever series loss upon England’s revolutionary Bazball playing style.
The unassailable 3-1 scoreline in the five-match series is the first abject presentation of Test failure under captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum.
They’ve drawn three times in the Bazball era, in 2023 to New Zealand and Australia and in a delayed Test at home to India which tied a series begun under the previous regime.
It is the first loss in a series of at least five Tests for England – excluding with Australia – since a 3-1 loss to the West Indies in a 1997-98 six-Test series.
So this is new territory for this current set-up, but the reality is this: Bazball is actually less about a style of play and more about the psychology of belief.
England outplayed
Any sane fan, player, coach or cricket expert will agree that India were the better team across the opening four Tests, and that they mastered the conditions better than England did, and that they survived the pressure moments with more authority than the tourists, and that they were on the whole more consistent. You get the point.
But if you take the deserved victory for India out of the picture and look at what England have done on tour – and in Pakistan last year – they have won four Tests and lost three.
And in that time we have seen the arrivals of Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir – three players who have staked their claims to potential long-term England cultures.
Ahmed could one day be the Shane Warne of England, Bashir has a five-wicket haul on his first tour – which happens to be in a country where bowling prospects can be bleak – and Hartley has proved himself to be a competent cricketer both with bat and ball.
This tour in India has also seen the semi revival of former captain Joe Root, who seemed to be in a rut – by his standards – after the opening three Tests.
And it has exposed some of England’s weaknesses: the lack of consecutive big scorers on hard pitches, that ruthlessness with the ball and the ability to win the psychological pressure moments.
Proud Stokes
“The 3-1 score doesn’t look great, but the way in which we’ve come at India is what I’m most proud of,” captain Stokes said after the fourth Test loss.
“This young, inexperienced team has been successful over the past two years, but coming to India is a completely different beast, something that this team has not been exposed to.
“We didn’t have a chance in hell of even competing with India, but even today that wasn’t an easy win for India and I think they would admit that.
“I’m very proud of the way every [England] player has thrown everything at India. No-one has ever taken a backward step.
“Cricket is always skill against skill. [Ravichandran] Ashwin, [Ravindra] Jadeja and Kuldeep [Yadav] and the conditions we found ourselves in against them were very, very challenging.
“When India have a sniff in conditions like that, any team is going to find it hard to not only keep the scoreboard ticking but rotate the strike. You’ve got to give them a lot of credit for the way in which they bowled in very favourable conditions. On this occasion, their skill was better than ours.”
True Bazball
Critics of Bazball have a point when they slate the holier-than-thou approach some of those in the England camp take when describing what they’re trying to do to Test cricket.
But in this tour to India we have seen how inexperienced bowlers with just a handful of first-class matches to their names can go to one of the most difficult countries to play in and produce performances to be proud of.
And when youngsters watch Test cricket on the TV or in a stadium this summer and see 20-year-old Bashir, 19-year-old Ahmed or 24-year-old Hartley reproduce their India form at home, there’s little doubt they’ll be inspired.
Because Bazball isn’t perfect, nothing is, but it isn’t half inspirational and enticing. And that must matter for at least something.
