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England batting collapses are hardly new, but the method of this one was almost unique.
The hosts’ insistence on swinging the willow at everything has turned a 1-188 start into 325 all out, taking any chance of winning the Lord’s Test with it.
While some have put this down to the inherent risks of Bazball, plenty of England legends have stuck the boot in following a nightmare day with the bat.
“England need to be realistic,” said former captain Michael Vaughan. “They cannot mix entertainment with stupidity. For the first 188 runs, England played good cricket with proper shots.
“Australian bowlers got no help as the ball was not doing anything, so they resorted to short balls. What came next was pure stupidity.
“England clearly like losing. Yesterday they gifted Australia three wickets. They arrive on day three, the pitch is doing a bit more. To see that wicket and Australia now know they are bowling to the tail.”
His Test Match Special colleague Alastair Cook – perhaps the least Bazball of any recent player – put the failure down to a lack of killer instinct in the team.
“What has happened here and at Edgbaston is England not having the killer instinct to nail Australia down,” he said.
“We don’t need to hit sixes, we just need to hammer teams down. They took scoring runs for granted in the first innings.
Ben Duckett of England leaves the field after losing his wicket Josh Hazlewood of Australia during Day Two of the LV= Insurance Ashes 2nd Test match between England and Australia at Lord’s Cricket Ground on June 29, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Jonathan Agnew, the veteran commentator, rounded on Bazball and insisted that England needed to change their style to stand a chance against the Australians.
“The last two days will haunt England,” he said. “If they do not change their approach with the bat they are not going to win the Ashes.
“I will not be negative about the principle of playing positive cricket. That I agree with. But England’s approach is turning into stubbornness because they have not learned from defeat at Edgbaston last week.”
Jonathan Liew, writing in The Guardian, said that it was appropriate to criticise the methods on show despite the run of success heading into the Ashes.
“There is a school of thought out there that if you appreciated England’s style of cricket when they were winning, then it is unfair to criticise it when it fails to come off,” he wrote.
“This is a little bit like arguing that if you have ever enjoyed a meal at a restaurant, you are not entitled to complain when they give you E. coli on your next visit. It’s just the way they cook.
“They’re taking a whole new approach to gastronomy. And ultimately, when you get down to it, is there really any difference between fine dining and violent diarrhoea?
“What we are being asked to accept, in effect, is not so much the vicissitude of sporting performance as a kind of inviolable creed. Accept this thing in full, as it is, without conditions or caveats.
“Your feedback is not required. Your judgement does not concern us. And of course this is fine when you win 10 out of 11 Tests. People will come along for the ride.
“Bazball’s foundational principle is sound and admirable: that sport is not simply about winning, but style and fun, making memories, leaving a mark. But, you know, maybe try both?”
In the Daily Mail, Oliver Holt compared the performance to the band that was playing around Lord’s in the intervals, and the band that played as the Titanic sunk, as well as lemmings running off a cliff.
“Gazing down on them. David Lloyd, the former England opener, England coach and commentator beyond compare, neatly articulated the sinking feeling so many of the supporters inside Lord’s were feeling. ‘And the band played on,’ he said.
“There were moments, undeniably, when England’s batsmen had looked like lemmings rushing towards a cliff as Australia’s bowlers peppered them with a barrage of short deliveries. They did not shirk the challenge. They swung for the fences and, generally, they missed.”
But Holt was one of the few who did not advocate totally giving up on Bazball, even after this disaster.
“Traditionalists are suspicious of England’s new style of play,” he wrote. “They think it is a gimmick and they think it is disrespectful of Test cricket. They think it is naive. They think it rather vulgar.
“The reality, of course, is that it is a breathtakingly bold version of Test cricket that is the best hope of the game, in this form, surviving.
“And guess what? England will not excel in every session of every game playing it. Sometimes, like on Friday morning, it will make them look foolish and reckless.
“In the new puritanical spirit pushing back against Bazball, losing your wicket to a poor defensive shot is far more preferable than losing it trying to attack.
“Oh for the times when England scored at less than three an over, were paralysed by caution and doubt, had no clear philosophy and looked frightened to play their shots and trust their talent. They went on a run of 17 Test matches where they only won once. Those were the days.
“They need to choose their moments to go hard, as they did in the Tests of last summer. Australia were always going to present the toughest challenge to England’s new philosophy because they are the best Test team in the world.
“But it would be sad if faith were lost in Bazball now, at the very first sign of adversity, and we followed the urgings of men like jilted John.
“This summer, it has already helped to conjure the epic contest at Edgbaston, widely considered to be one of the greatest Test matches of all time.
“There is no reason to change tack. There is no going back.”