Test cricket has been around for centuries, and over years and years of conventionality, a particular pattern of play has emerged. Quite often, it has revolved around grit, determination, playing the waiting game and letting the opposition crack first.
Hard-nosed cricket, as some would call it, has seen countless teams dominate across generations. Flamboyance was a cornerstone of most of these sides too but whenever mentioning Test cricket, there was always a sense of this being a test of patience more than anything else.
Every once in a while, though, as it regularly happens across different sports, someone comes along to challenge those notions. Someone or an outfit that smirks at the traditional way of playing, and puts forth a method that might not just have been inconceivable a while back, but also deemed ludicrous, absurd and many such adjectives.
England are that team in Test cricket currently. And Bazball (or whatever you want to call it) is that method.
England, for what it is worth, have now won two Tests on the spin against India with Ben Stokes at the helm and with Brendon McCullum in charge. Yes, it has been two years apart, but that is what the record states, at least at the time of writing.
This win, though, will reverberate far more than their 2022 Birmingham triumph. And that is largely because it was achieved in India, against a side that had only lost thrice since the culmination of the home Test series against England in 2013.
The victory, in itself, is a great deal. But it is the manner that will be remembered long after this series, or this particular ensemble cast is done. It began in expected fashion, with England being bowled out for a sub-250 total, attempting the sort of shots the textbook unabashedly advises against in these conditions.
They then gave up more than 400, which cast light on their bowling reserves, critiquing if they had picked the right personnel. Tom Hartley, having not played a Test yet, was their second front-line spinner alongside Jack Leach, who last played a Test in June 2023. All this while Liam Dawson, a frequent wicket-taker at the County level, concurrently plies his trade in T20 franchise leagues.
Funnily enough, former New Zealand cricketer Jeetan Patel, who now works as England’s spin-bowling coach, quipped post Day 2 that if anyone did not know the score, they would have felt that England were the team on top. England were trailing by 175 runs at that juncture.
It sounds ridiculous. But maybe they just believe in themselves so blindly. That they can win from any situation. Against any opposition. In any condition. As long as they stay true to who they believe they should be.
And so…it began.
Ollie Pope led England’s turnaround with a magnificent ton
Ollie Pope played one of the all-time great knocks – unfurling reverse sweeps and sweeps as regularly as defensive strokes. He played these strokes as confidently as Virat Kohli would play a cover drive or Rohit Sharma would play a pull, and in that instant, it became clear that England had fully committed to this plan.
Prior to that Pope innings, Ben Duckett, who had endured a torrid time on his last India tour, kept attacking with abandon. Zak Crawley, never far away from a string of low scores, kept at it too, not worrying about how he might look, and backing himself to the hilt.
The bowlers subsequently stood up in the fourth innings. Hartley getting the ball to spin square and getting it to straighten just when the illusion of spin had been created. Leach, bandaged left knee and all, doing just enough to chip in and ensure that the pressure was not released when Hartley needed a break.
Among all of that, there was also a Ben Stokes moment. There had to be one. Ravindra Jadeja had pushed the ball to mid on and had set off for a single. Stokes, twice previously in the session, had fumbled at mid on and had allowed the run.
This time, too, he seemed to overrun it. Despite being a right-handed thrower, he gathered the ball to his left. Unconventional with a capital U, according to the textbook. But that only cleared the path for arguably the greatest back-flick throw cricket has seen all these years.
These might be isolated incidents and is definitely not a full-scale description of everything that unfolded in Hyderabad across four manic days. When viewed in context, though, the overriding theme is quite clear and pretty tough to miss.
This England team, if you tell them that something cannot be done, will ensure that it gets done.
They might face ridicule along the way because they have challenged the established order, but they will commit to it completely. They might fall flat on their face, but they will soar higher than anyone else if it all comes together, which has been quite often under this particular leadership group.
There is a murmur that Stokes and McCullum (after whom this brand of cricket aka Bazball was coined) do not particularly like this moniker. There is a sense that they want the attention to be diverted onto the collective, rather than just being looked upon as a gleaning achievement of one particular individual.
Deep down, though, they must be proud (not of the name) but of the brand of cricket they have this team playing. It is fearless. It has, at times, a devil-may-care persona about it. Some dub it daft on occasions. But it is also commitment to the cause in its truest sense.
The critics said they could not sweep and reverse-sweep their way to big hundreds in the sub-continent. They were hell-bent that there was no coming back from 2-0 down in an Ashes series against the newly crowed WTC winners, and that this attacking batting approach would clearly not work in India.
That a left-arm spinner, with all of 20 First-class matches behind him (where he averaged more than 35, by the way), and a part-time off-spinner, whose primarily role is to score runs rather than take wickets, could almost out-bowl the mighty Indian spinning troika.
That Test matches, against a team of India’s batting and bowling qualities, cannot be won after surrendering 100-plus run leads in the first innings, at home and on foreign shores.
But here we are.
Of course, there is still a very high chance that England will crash and burn in what remains of this Test series; the fine line between being courageous and stupid being infringed upon in the process. Not to mention that India, more often than not, are just too good at home.
This performance, however, is not about what might happen in two months. It is about the here and now. Of what England believed in, and of what they have now perhaps made a significant portion of the cricket-watching population believe in.
And in that particular realm, England and their band of Bazballers have questioned what is indeed possible in this beautiful game of ours. Or, what is indeed not possible.
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