The ‘Bazball’ is again drawing ire from veterans and fans alike after the England batting line-up collapsed on Day 3 of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s.
England started the day on 278 for 4 but lost their remaining of the six wickets for just 47 runs in the morning session, handing Australia a solid 91-run first-innings lead.
Looking at the speed at which the runs were flowing for the hosts, it seemed Australia would lose their hard-scored advantage after scoring a solid 416 runs. But the Aussies came back strong on Friday and dashed the hosts’ hopes of securing an upper hand in the match and up their chances for equalising the series.
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The team has come under strong criticism ever since their loss in the first Test. Veterans have accused skipper Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum of chasing excitement and entertainment over trying to win the game, an accusation they strongly refute.
Stokes and McCullum claim that they are going straight in for victory by their aggressive ’Bazball’ approach instead of unnecessarily dragging the game to a draw.
Earlier after stumps on Day 2, English spin coach Jeetan Patel echoed the same line of thought when asked what a realistic target for England would be.
“We’ve seen some amazing things from this team,” he said. “It’s going to be a different ask against a different attack but we’ve seen some crazy things from this line-up in the last year.
“This team is about breaking records, they want to set new standards. They want to sell out grounds and the way to do that is firstly to bowl them out and set the crowd alight and then chase whatever it is down.”
Patel was perhaps alluding to England’s surprising 378-run chase to beat India, a record they will take heart from in a big chase that seems to be coming their way.
He seemed to defend their new brand of cricket that brings the experience of limited-overs cricket to the longer format.
“We’ve always said that we want to play an aggressive brand,” said Patel.
“It’s not always going to come off and that’s not a cop-out. It’s just reality. They were pretty accurate with how they went about their plan.”
“We want to keep changing momentum,” he added.
“We want to force swings in the game that come back our way a bit like you would see in white-ball cricket.”
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