England's Bazball excuses are only holding them back

Major in history in any one of the fine Australian universities and one of the first things the professors will tell you is that revisionist history is alive and well.

The art of retelling history through another lens serves great effect in 2023, with no better example than the Ashes series. There is little doubt that the English cricket team is guilty of revising cricketing history.

Stuart Broad began by declaring the 2021 Ashes “null and void”. Sorry, Stuart, but the old adage, “The winners write the history books” also applies in this case. You have 600 wickets, not 587, and Australia won that Ashes 4-0 thanks, ironically, to a spot of rain in Sydney.

Unfortunately for Broad, he is not God and cannot just create something out of nothing nor declare something null and void. Broad’s pretentious statement highlighted how England’s positive mindset copes with losing under Bazball.

(Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

In fact, until the first two Tests of this Ashes series, this English side had lost just four times, most recently going down by 1 run to New Zealand in Wellington. There, probably because of the closeness of the defeat and also probably because the Kiwis might just be the nicest Test side in world cricket, English captainBen Stokes was magnanimous in defeat, declaring “Other sides are allowed to play better than us.”

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So, why was there not the same acknowledgement after Birmingham, where Australia won by 2 wickets? Apparently, the vibes told the English they had won even though, ‘losing sucks’. The biggest problem with ‘vibes’ determining how a Test win or loss is viewed is that ‘vibes’ can change throughout a Test match.

By all means, play positive cricket with a positive mindset and resist toxic thoughts, but do not fabricate excuses for your loss.

In the second Test, English vibes consoled themselves with the moral high ground. Again, the blatant ignorance of fact and embrace of fiction left the English side deluded into believing that they lost, not because Australia was so much better and England bowled poorly at times, but because Jonny Bairstow’s run out was so chronically unjust, against the spirit of cricket, that it never should have happened.

It did not matter to the English team (or to Piers Morgan) that the umpire had not called over before Bairstow left his crease. Ignorance of fact stood in the way of England learning the lessons from Lords.

Finally, justice was served with a thoroughly deserved win in the third Test. To English eyes, this win was the vindication of the ‘vibes’ from the First Test and a righting of wrongs from the Second. In fact, so comprehensive was the (3 wicket) victory that little was preventing them from winning the Ashes outright. But then came the second, and perhaps, the cruellest injustice of all. Rain.

(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Jesus himself said, “He sends rain on the just and the unjust” but for the English, rain itself is injustice. “We should just keep playing under floodlights”, says Joe Root, forgetting that a red ball becomes much more difficult to see under lights, especially as it ages. Creating excuses like Root’s allows for excuses in the game plan and execution.

Historically, rain has been accepted as an unfortunate part of cricket, not as something to be rewritten in an attempt to repair a bruised ego.

The second and fourth Tests demonstrated that bazball hides a group of childish boys who play with unbridled enthusiasm but cannot handle their own emotions or feelings when things do not go their way.

Onto the fifth and final Test at The Oval, Australia’s scene of World Test Championship success. Undoubtedly, revisionist history will serve England well after the fifth Test, persuading them that things could have been oh so different if just a few more things had gone their way.

One can only hope that facts and reason begin to distil in the English side very soon as they process another Ashes series loss on home soil and lead to further improvements in 2027.