Mitchell Starc of Australia celebrates after taking the wicket of Rishabh Pant of India (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
When India was getting mauled by Australia in the Pink Ball Test, not too far away from the Adelaide Oval, another visiting team, in completely contrasting style was hammering the living day lights out of the hosts. England, in their typical revolutionary Bazball style counter-attacked a potent New Zealand bowling unit and blasted their way to a series win in under three days at the Basin Reserve in Wellington. England scored their runs at the rate of knots and a run-rate of 5.15 on a treacherous wicket at the Basin Reserve was nothing short of spectacular.
The question which then emerges is this – did India miss a trick by not taking the attack to the Australian bowlers? Should India adopt their own version of Bazball – a glimpse of which they showcased against Bangladesh in Kanpur in September? RG analyses.
England’s Cuccess with Bazball
England were humiliated 4-0 in the 2021-22 Ashes Down Under and were then embarrassed by a low-ranked West Indian unit in the Caribbean. Their traditional and orthodox approach to Test cricket needed a catastrophic change and they put the onus on Brendon McCullum – the maverick New Zealand wicket-keeper batter. England had undergone a renaissance in limited overs cricket post 2015 which had led them to a sensational win in the 2019 World Cup at home and later in the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
It was time to replicate the success of white-ball cricket to red-ball cricket and that resulted in the birth of Bazball. Bazball is nothing but an attitude and approach where attack is the first form of defence, where batters do not fear the bowlers, they do not care about reputation and the onus is on maximizing runs than on preserving wickets.
England have played 11 Test series since adopting Bazball and won as many as seven of them. They drew in New Zealand in 2023 and the Ashes at home in the summer. The only two series they lost were in India and Pakistan (both in 2024) where they succumbed to spin. However, these losses in no way reflect a failure of Bazball in slow and low conditions in Asia. In fact, England won the series opener both in India (Hyderabad) and Pakistan (Multan) with Bazball at its peak in both the matches but failed to build on the momentum thereafter.
England had trounced Pakistan 3-0 on their last tour to the country in 2022-23.
In terms of match-win percentage, Bazball stands at an impressive 64.7% basically implying that England have won approximately two of every three matches with their new attacking template – that is a very high success percentage for any approach leave alone for Bazball which involves taking a high percentage of calculated risk!
England have won 22 of the 34 Tests they have played post Bazball and their win percentage puts them right at the top of the charts – even higher than Australia – who are the number 1 ranked ICC Test team currently. Australia have a win percentage of 60% in the same time frame. Just to give you a perspective of what they have done with the bat in this period – England batters have a combined batting strike rate of 72.95 since June 2022 and are way ahead of the pack with India at number two at 57.63.
Why Can’t India Emulate England?
The big question which then arises is that why can’t India – which, man for man is a far more talented batting unit than England, emulate this strategy which is nothing short of a mini revolution in Test cricket and has brought so much success within the first two and a half years of its implementation. The problem is not in the resources for India but in the attitude.
Every member of the England Test XI has embraced Bazball as a philosophy and live and die by it! Even traditional and orthodox Test batters like Joe Root and Ollie Pope have taken to it and with some success. Thus, the problem for a team like India is in the mind rather than in their physical ability to implement an approach like Bazball.
Critics may argue that India won the Perth Test against Australia playing solid old-school attritional cricket. Yes, that was the need of the hour and that does not contradict the theory of Bazball. Bazball does not entail being reckless and attempting a boundary of every delivery a batter faces. It just means that a batter maximizes his options to score runs. There will be situations and circumstances owing to the pitch and overhead conditions and situation of the match when being circumspect and preserving your wicket is the more challenging thing to do than going helter-skelter after the bowling – and that is also a part of Bazball.
Having said that, Bazball is more productive when the conditions are hard and challenging, when defending has a higher chance of getting you out than taking the attack to the opposition bowlers – as India found out in the Pink Ball Test in Adelaide. Only Pant and Nitish Kumar Reddy had the courage to challenge the Australian bowlers but by the time they walked out to bat, in both innings, India were already way behind in the game. There was a strong case for an out of form Rohit Sharma to counter-attack Scott Boland in the first innings – much like England did in the Birmingham Ashes Test in 2023. He did not and instead was trapped leg before wicket for 3 off 23 deliveries. A similar argument could be made for Kohli who also succumbed to Boland poking outside off in the second innings.
India’s batters, especially the senior lot need to step out of their comfort zone in the twilight of their career and unleash their own version of Bazball. This should not be alien to them. After all, it was skipper Rohit himself who initiated a massive transformation in India’s approach at the top of the order, especially in the powerplay in white-ball cricket post their early ouster from the 2021 T20 World Cup in the UAE. That brought India great rewards including a stunning run at the 2023 World Cup at home before losing in the final and of course, the 2024 T20 World Cup in the Caribbean.
India has the talent and the resources to not only adopt Bazball but to own it and master it better than any other team in the world. But do they have the will?
Nikhil Narain is a die-hard cricket romantic, published author, and has worked for some of the leading digital websites and broadcasters in India and overseas. An alumnus of the London School of Economics, Nikhil's forte is using data and numbers creatively to weave interesting stories and revolutionize the way cricket statistics are generated and analyzed.
