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Opinion
As far as I know, never, in the 145-year history of Test cricket, has a team embraced a strategy of doing the best they can in the first three innings of a Test match, confident in the knowledge that they will bat last and chase down whatever target they are set. Never.
Yet, that is exactly what the English cricket team have done this northern summer. Set targets of 277, 299, 296 and 378 in the fourth innings this season, the Poms succeeded in each run chase.
And they even had the hide to do it in a canter. The bastards!
The Windies had a mantra in the 70s and 80s that their fabled four-pronged pace attack could win any Test, in the fourth innings, no matter how small the total they had to defend. England are now boasting that their batsman can win any Test, in the fourth innings, no matter how large the total they have to chase.
(Photo by Visionhaus/Getty Images)
Strong batting teams – such as the Aussies in the decades each side of 2000 – adopted the sensible strategy of batting the other team out of the match in their first innings, whether batting first or not, and then turning to their bowlers to secure the win.
This English summer, the Poms have decided that even if they fall short in their first innings they will prevail by making it up in their second.
Call it Bazball. Call it nuts. Call it whatever you like. It’s a bold strategy. And I bloody love it.
Is it an immutable law of physics that teams can’t regularly score big on the last day to win a Test? Or is it just that few teams have rarely ever tried? Is the barrier physical or mental?
With success comes belief. And this English team now believes.
But will they be able to maintain their innovative strategy? Their success has hinged on Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root’s rude run of form. Will their strategy change with a form slump or two?
If they stumble in the last innings, on variable foreign pitches, will they return to the traditional strategy of batting first and batting big?
And what about opposing teams? Do we now win the toss and send the Poms in? Make them bat first against their wishes? But what if the pitch is a belter or forecast to be minefield on the last day? Do we abandon our game plan to thwart theirs?
As an Australian who grew up with an instinctive colonial hatred for Geoffrey Boycott and Mike Brearley – and a begrudging, at best, admiration for Ian Botham and Daivd Gower – it is confronting to now find myself invigorated by the enterprise and courage demonstrated by an English cricket team.
But if you can’t find it within yourself to admire their success – and they way they succeeded – over the last several months then you’re a nark.
I do find some comfort, however, it must be said, in reminding myself that it took an `English’ captain and a coach, both born in the southern hemisphere, to the turn the world of Test cricket upside down.
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