The English media’s fascination with Bazball continues to rage unabated, but there’s a worrying concern in their ranks as the first Test reaches a thrilling conclusion on Tuesday.
It wasn’t just former England player Kevin Pietersen fawning over the innings of Joe Root (45) that helped England set up a fourth innings target of 281 that the Aussies will attempt to run down.
While Pietersen swooned like a love sick teen in the commentary box – seek out Ricky Ponting’s brutal put down of KP’s blatherings on our site – the UK press pack also waxed lyrical.
In a series where the weird tactical gambits of Ben Stokes have taken centre stage it will come as absolutely no surprise that the Poms’ favourite shot of the day was actually one where Root played and missed.
“When Joe Root tried to reverse-ramp the first ball of day four, delivered at appreciable pace by Australia’s captain Pat Cummins, it was the dot-ball of the century,” aggrandised Scyld Berry in the Telegraph.
Joe Root of England attempts a ramp shot off the first ball of the day from Pat Cummins. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
“Some old-timers like WG Grace and Sir Jack Hobbs would have faced 200,000 balls without ever playing that shot. But thousands of young cricketers will be trying it now, either to the first ball of a day or their innings.
“Madness (Scyld’s words, not ours). This was the reaction of many spectators, from expert pundits to people who take no interest in cricket until the Ashes light up every summer in four, both to Root’s opening gambit and to his dazzling counterattack as a whole.”
Berry built his piece on the four reasons why the Root failed ramp shot was the logical course of action, before concluding: “Would England have scored more in their second innings if they had played in traditional fashion, with straight bats? It is debatable. For certain though, Australia would have been far, far happier if they had.”
Perhaps it helped England’s columnists that Root’s failed stroke happened on the first ball of the day and not the last, giving them plenty of time to dust off superlatives.
“As Joe Root waited to face the first ball of the day from Australia captain Pat Cummins, England were under pressure. They were 28 for 2 at the start of their second innings, danger was all around and the Australians smelled blood,” wrote Oliver Holt in the Daily Mail.
“In normal times, that respected age-old conventions and conformed to national stereotypes, England would have dug in. They would have opted for retrenchment. No risks. They would have done the cricket equivalent of covering up on the ropes and would probably have collapsed.
“We are connoisseurs of the collapse in England and this felt ripe for one.
“But this is an England team that has wrapped itself in the wonderful embrace of a kind of chaos theory.
“Root did not play safe. Cummins speared the ball down outside his off stump, but Root did not leave it or prod at it or play a forward defensive.
“No, Joe Root, England’s great classicist, one of the best Test batsmen of all time, stepped smartly to his left and attempted to lift Cummins’ first ball over the slip cordon with a reverse scoop shot. He missed, but it hardly seemed to matter. It was the intent that mattered.
“Up in the commentary box, former England bowler Phil Tufnell nearly fell off his chair. ‘I think I’m getting too old for this game,’ he said.”
Holt said the first delivery was Bazball in microcosm.
“‘Let’s see England play their shots when they’re under the pump,’ the doubters, and many of the Australian media, had been saying. Well, England were under the pump and they still played their shots. They are not for turning.””
Holt added: “Root was a joy to watch. He was a bewitching hybrid of traditional batting brilliance and innovative genius. He was Geoff Boycott and Jos Buttler wrapped into one dance of elegant mayhem. Some still see this transformation of England cricket as sacrilege, somehow. They do not trust it. They think it will blow up in England’s face. But that is to misunderstand the concept.
“And if you had been at Edgbaston on Monday or were watching on television, how could you fail to be seduced by Root’s cameo? It was magnificent entertainment, sport at its best, daring, risky, brilliant and, yes, fun.”
Steve James of The Times was at it too.
“So, he began this fourth day, with England only 35 ahead and nothing on his personal account,” he wrote.
“This was crunch time. Cummins had three balls remaining in his over, with England’s best batsman facing. Three slips were waiting with Cameron Green just a little wider alongside them at a sort of fifth slip, where he can cover vast swathes of ground with his long levers.
Pat Cummins celebrates. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
“There was no third man. That clearly caught Root’s eye. Or maybe it didn’t — maybe he just wanted to make the most audacious statement possible at the moment everybody would be watching most intently. As Stuart Broad revealed after the day’s play, it was certainly premeditated. “The intent from ball one was pretty clear,” the bowler said. “I sit next to Rooty in the changing room and he just went, ‘I fancy a reverse-scoop for six first ball.’ I said, ‘If it’s in your gut, then you’ve got to go for it — that’s what we’re about.’ That sort of thing has really made us smile in the changing room.”
“Whatever Root’s thought process, to the very first ball of the day — on nought, remember — he attempted a reverse-ramp to Cummins, a quite magnificent fast bowler, remember. That Root missed (for once he pulled his head away from the line of the ball a little too early) did not necessarily matter. He smiled about that. In that one moment he had sent shockwaves around Edgbaston and way, way beyond.
“Yes, since the revolution he has played the shot many times (and described it as “safe as houses” when there is no third man), but now? Really?
“Really. It was sensational stuff. What’s more, by the end of the next over, from Scott Boland, he had played the shot twice more, the first going for six and the second for four.”
Just out of frame of the Root love in, something a little more troubling was happening in the form of wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow. If Australia does go onto win on Tuesday, it will be down, some part, to his sub standard performance behind the stumps.
Yet even his struggles are seen through the Bazball lens.
“As the clock ticked past 4.36pm, the sun already burning through the mid-afternoon haze, there was some literal Bazball to be seen on the lime-green Edgbaston outfield – raw, foraged Bazball – as Brendon McCullum took Jonny Bairstow for his wicketkeeping warmup before Australia’s fourth-innings chase,”” wrote Barney Ronay in the Guardian.
“And of course it wasn’t about the catches, walloped into the gloves with a deliciously grizzled bat. This was all about the hugs, the words in the ear, the million‑dollar smile, the sense of voodoo, bro‑vibes, man‑feelings.
“Bairstow laughed and leaned in close, feeling the good stuff. And from a distance it felt like something a little targeted and forensic, emergency mid-game repairs to a tender spot in this team. Because whatever happens on the final day of this relentlessly gripping Test it is probably also time to talk about Jonny.
“Although, not in a way where anyone has to feel bad. Certainly his place in this team is utterly nailed down. Bairstow is the spirit animal of Bazball, and not just for the dam-burst of adrenal, biceps‑flexing runs over the past year; the rage-hundreds; the way his bat slaps through the ball like a man gleefully demolishing a stud wall with a polo mallet.
“Bairstow is 34 this year. It feels these days that his brilliance comes from a place of scars already acquired, of mid-series droppings and points proved. This is very much the Bazball emotional landscape, a sense of something that feels like a balm to the bruises of the sport. This is not the cricket of some cloudless crop of young guns, more a middle‑aged catharsis, out there in their Spiderman suits, hitting sixes off Tower Bridge.”
Ronay added: “If England play most of the time like a group of men in a raging hurry to get to a round of golf, then this is in part because they are. But it is also about not seeing those joins, accepting the flaws, seeing only additions and not subtractions.
“There is a limit to these things, however. And that tender spot was there again 15 minutes after those warmups as Usman Khawaja played half a shot to a ball from Jimmy Anderson, edging low and hard between Bairstow and first slip.
“It was a wicketkeeper’s catch, if only on the principle that, basically, you’re standing there with a massive pair of gloves and it is your job. It would have been a brilliant catch. But that is no excuse. The England Test team should expect to field a brilliant wicketkeeper.”
There is every chance Bairstow is called upon on day five, with Australia 174 runs from victory with seven wickets left.
“Edgbaston has seen it all before when it comes to tense Ashes finishes but it is in line for another absolute classic today with the nation hiding behind the sofa as the first Test reaches a tense climax,” promised Nick Hoult in the Telegraph.
Usman Khawaja. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)
“Eighteen years have passed since England won by two runs to level the greatest Ashes series of all time. They started the final day of that match with the Test in their grasp and won it by a thickness of a leather glove.
“The weather is predicted to be changeable which could play into England’s hands by freshening up conditions and then there is the Ben Stokes factor. His team courses with belief drummed into them by the captain and it could make the difference today.
“Every run will be a moment, every chance has to be held for England, who have showed a lack of ruthlessness in a match that should be over by now in their favour.
“Chances have gone down, the first innings declaration will be a moot point, and even though they have entertained from ball one, now they have to finish it off and win or it was all for nothing. England say that losing does not matter, but this is Ashes cricket.”
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