‘Bazball’: England cricket’s glorious new look

A staggering turnaround has taken place under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes

Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow are enjoying ‘remarkable purple patches’ with the bat
Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow are enjoying ‘remarkable purple patches’ with the bat
(Image credit: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

“Bazball”: that’s what they’re calling the relentlessly aggressive approach to Test cricket that England have embraced under new head coach Brendon McCullum, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. And on Tuesday at Edgbaston, the strategy notched up another triumph. In their single Test against India (completing the series begun last summer), England did what they’d already done to New Zealand three times this summer: they made mincemeat of a fourth-innings run chase that had seemed out of reach. Having dominated the first three days, India were bowled out for 245 in their second innings, leaving England 378 for victory – a total higher than any they’d chased in their 145 years of Test cricket.

Yet they made it look easy, said Ali Martin in The Guardian. After Alex Lees and Zak Crawley had blazed their way to “England’s fastest century opening stand in history”, England briefly faltered, losing three wickets for two runs. But that merely brought Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow together – two batsmen enjoying “remarkable purple patches”. And they completed the job with an unbroken stand of 254, both “finessing a pair of slick centuries”.

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