Naive England won’t abandon Bazball but they have to learn from awful India rout
5th Test, Day 3: India 477 (Gill 110, Rohit 103 | Bashir 5-173) beat England 218 and 195 (Root 84 | Ashwin 5-77) by an innings and 64 runs
Ben Stokes has warned England’s critics to write off Bazball at their peril despite his team’s crushing 4-1 series defeat in India.
Not even James Anderson grabbing his 700th Test wicket could mask the gruesomeness of this horror show in the Himalayas as England collapsed to a febrile innings defeat in this final Test.
There can be no complaints about the series scoreline either after Stokes’ Bazballers were thoroughly dismantled during three days of horrendously one-sided cricket.
Only Anderson, who became the first seamer in history to reach the 700-wicket landmark when he dismissed Kuldeep Yadav first thing, and Joe Root, who scored a brave, rearguard 84, can walk away from this final day with any credit.
The rest of England’s batters were culpable of throwing in the towel even before they resumed their second innings 259 runs in arrears.
The ugly attempted slog sweep from Ben Foakes that saw the team’s least expansive batter bowled by Ravichandran Ashwin as England lost their sixth wicket summed up the malaise.
This was simply awful.
However, Stokes was in defiant mood afterwards, with England’s captain insisting: “It is a tough game, cricket, and it can eat you up. But write this team off, write me off at your own peril.
“For us, this series shouldn’t affect anything we’ve managed to achieve before this tour. It’s the first time, particularly these last four games, this team has been dominated pretty much the whole time. We will use this as inspiration to become a better team. We will use it as inspiration to become better players. That is the mentality we have.
“The media name Bazball – everyone says ‘what is it?’. In my opinion, it’s wanting to be a better player. In the face of defeat and failure, Bazball will hopefully inspire people to become better players and become even better than what we are.”
Having competed well across the first four Tests, this was a game too far for a team who had bloodied India’s nose by winning the opening match in Hyderabad in sensational fashion. By the end, though, they were already in the departure lounge.
Indeed, a seventh defeat in 12 Tests is proof that coach Brendon McCullum and Stokes need to go back to the drawing board ahead of the start of the home Test summer in July.
Bazball worked brilliantly for the first year, stopping a slump of one win in 17 Tests and winning 11 of their first 13 in charge.
However, that golden run has come to a shuddering halt in recent months, with this first series defeat sealed by four losses in a row following on from an Ashes series that they were only able to draw after losing the first two Tests against the Australians.
If the summer saw chinks in England’s aggressive method exposed then this series has seen the wheels well and truly fall off Bazball.
Yet Stokes says England will use the pain of defeat here as fuel for taking the team to the next level.
“Failure is a great teacher to sports teams,” he said. “You either let failure and disappointment eat you up and shoot you down, and you never seem to find a way back up. But you learn from failures and you make sure you don’t lose the enthusiasm of what we do.”
This defeat was as bad as anything served up in the desperate final days of the previous regime under coach Chris Silverwood and Root’s captaincy.
Something has to give this summer, when the West Indies and Sri Lanka are England’s opponents across six Tests, with several of the players who have failed here surely now in danger of being dropped.
Ollie Pope, Jonny Bairstow, Foakes and Ollie Robinson should be particularly concerned.
Even if one of McCullum’s key tenets as coach is loyalty, the return of Harry Brook, who missed this tour for family reasons, and a group of young seamers led by Josh Tongue, Matthew Potts and Brydon Carse will give the selectors food for thought as they start to plan ahead to the next Ashes series Down Under in 18 months’ time.
McCullum and Stokes need to recalibrate their method too, with the cult of positivity running aground on the reality of facing India in their own conditions. There’s a need now for pragmatism and adaptability to be injected into the way this team do things.
This is no time to abandon Bazball. But with question marks about whether it can work consistently against the world’s best following two tough series against last year’s World Test Championship finalists, it’s time for a reboot.
There should be confidence that McCullum and Stokes can learn from this chastening series. But the naivety shown by England in key moments during the past two series needs to be eliminated.
Players must continue to be encouraged to enjoy themselves and play with freedom. But there has to be consequences for performances such as this. It just isn’t good enough.
Overall, England will reflect on a catastrophic winter for both the Test and white-ball teams. In fact when you add this series defeat to England’s blowout at the World Cup in India before Christmas and the T20 and ODI series defeats in the West Indies that followed, this is their worst in a decade.
The winter of 2013-14 that included an Ashes whitewash in Australia saw 18 defeats in 23 games across all formats. This loss in Dharamshala was England’s 15th in 22.
With England also having not won a Test series in 15 months, there are serious questions for director of cricket Rob Key to answer. Both red and white-ball teams have regressed dramatically since the end of the summer.
Both set-ups may be separate, yet they have both had one thing in common this winter – losing regularly. That needs to change. Quickly.
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