The end came swiftly. It took New Zealand only 51.2 overs to wrap up the England second innings at Trent Bridge.

Jamie Smith’s slog against Mitchell Santner ended in the hands of a diving Nathan Smith, running in from long-on. That was not just the end of the third Test. It was also the end of what was perhaps the most discussed, or debated, style of playing Test cricket since Bodyline.

Breaking point

New Zealand won by 160 runs, and also became the first team ever to win a three-match series in England after losing the opening Test. It was indeed a fabulous achievement by Tom Latham’s men.

For Latham’s English counterpart, Ben Stokes, it was his last international match. For the coach, Brendon McCullum, it was the last Test in charge of England.

Bazball thus came to its inevitable end. Ironically, it had begun with a series against New Zealand in an English summer, four years ago. And it had begun in magnificent fashion, with England winning four Tests, all chasing, all with guns blazing, in a row — three against New Zealand and one against India.

It was even more remarkable because the England Test team was going through a tough period at that time: it had won just one of 17 matches after the first Test against India at Chennai in early 2021. Coach Chris Silverwood lost his job, following the 0-4 drubbing in the 2021-22 Ashes in Australia, and after the defeat in the Caribbean in March 2022, Joe Root resigned.

So, it wasn’t the most ideal of situations when McCullum was appointed as England’s Test coach by Rob Key, managing director of England men’s cricket. And the Kiwi had no previous experience of coaching in red-ball cricket, though he had been in charge of franchise teams such as the Kolkata Knight Riders.

McCullum conceived, Stokes executed. They will be remembered as one of cricket’s most remarkable coach-captain duos.

Their approach to playing Test cricket was the kind that hadn’t been witnessed before. New Zealand and India weren’t prepared for the ultra-aggressive mode of cricket England played in the summer of 2022.

It was not just England’s style that was spectacular. The results were, too.

Against New Zealand, England’s scores in the second innings were 279 for five, 299 for five, and 296 for three. Against India, it was 378 for three. And those chases were completed at brisk strike-rates.

Chasing a big total has always been a daunting task in Test cricket. Safety first has nearly always been the mantra, and even that stunning chase by India against Australia at Brisbane in 2021 had begun on a cautious note. It took an extraordinary hook by Washington Sundar against Pat Cummins and an out-of-the-world counterattacking knock by Rishabh Pant to make India shift gears and aim for the ultimate glory.

Interestingly, Stokes once spoke of how the manner in which Pant played made him think about the possibilities of aggressive batting in Test cricket. And before Pant, there were Adam Gilchrist and Virender Sehwag, but what made the concept of Bazball different was that everyone wanted to bat as if there was no tomorrow. If a wicketkeeper as accomplished as Ben Foakes could not find a place in the eleven, it showed what McCullum and Stokes wanted.

Finding expression

What Bazball looked to do was to remove the fear of failing. So regardless of the situation, a player was allowed to play his strokes, or express himself, as England cricketers would explain in press conference after press conference. When England fielded, the bowlers were asked to always look for wickets; restricting the batters from making runs wasn’t the priority.

And England wanted to win. An exciting — though not successful — chase was found more appealing than a draw. One was never sure if that was quite right in competitive sport. And one of the charms of Test cricket — and also what someone new to cricket would not understand — is the sheer thrill of not getting a decisive result after playing for five days, more than 30 hours.

Such trivial matters, however, didn’t cross the minds of the English players, and their fans, for much of the early part of the Bazball era, as the team posted some astounding wins, like the one against Pakistan at Rawalpindi in 2022, when England scored 657 from just 101 overs. Two years later, the victory against India in the first Test at Hyderabad was even greater, as England had conceded a first-innings lead of 190.

The four Tests that followed, however, showed why Bazball can’t work all the time. India won all those matches. For all England’s aggressive intent, it is debatable whether a batter of Root’s quality needed to play a reverse scoop against a bowler of Jasprit Bumrah’s quality.

An identical scoreline (4-1) in the most recent Ashes in Australia meant that Bazball couldn’t click against stronger opposition. Bazball also worked more on flatter surfaces, while it had problems when the ball moved or turned.

Right from the beginning of Bazball, the big question was whether it was a sustainable model. As former England batter Mark Butcher told The Hindu recently, Test cricket is a format that dictates to you what is necessary. “If you push too hard, the game will bite you back,” he said.

McCullum and Stokes had indeed pushed too hard. When you go on to lose a Test match by two wickets after declaring on the opening day with two wickets remaining, questions are bound to be asked.

Questions were also asked about how some of the England players behaved off the field during the Bazball era. The pub-incident involving Stokes and Gus Atkinson this summer didn’t help, either.

The statistics may not say that England benefited much from Bazball. In 49 Tests, England scored 27 wins, but lost 20. That there were just two draws is of course hardly surprising.

A fair evaluation

But it would not be fair to evaluate Bazball’s legacy just based on numbers, even if they are impressive when it comes to run-rates, strike-rates and hundreds. It was an attempt to play Test cricket in a different way and entertain the paying public.

But for Bazball, we would not have been able to witness Jonny Bairstow metamorphosing into Viv Richards in 2022 or Ollie Pope turning the reverse sweep into the best form of defence during his monumental 196 in the Hyderabad Test. Bazball was fun while it lasted.

It could have lasted longer perhaps if England had been a little more conservative on occasion and realised that Test cricket’s charm lies in its infinite variety. There is more than one way to play what is the most demanding form of all sports.

There is joy in watching Harry Brook dance down the track. There is also joy in watching Shubman Gill play a perfect forward defensive push.

It was 25 years ago that Mark Butcher scored a monumental 173 not out in England’s successful chase against Australia in the Headingley Test. He scored seven other Test hundreds, some of them against the most fearsome attacks. He is now a popular commentator and sharp analyst of the game. Excerpts from Butcher’s exclusive interview with The Hindu at Lord’s:

Your comparison of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi with Garry Sobers earlier this year got a lot of attention. It was fascinating, how you proved, through the help of visuals, the similarities in the bat swing, hand speed…

I watched him make that 175 [off 80 balls] in the Under-19 World Cup final [against England at Harare]. I was struck by that incredible, long, high backlift, the huge follow-through, the complete circle almost where the bat finishes around, tapping him on the spine. You know, Sobers used to hit a lot of shots with his feet together. He would play full balls almost off the back foot. And Sooryavanshi can hit them like that too.

Even if his career ends up not reaching the expectations that other people have, which I think is very unlikely, he has still in the IPL done something that all of the greatest players up until now have never, ever done: none of them have managed to score at a strike-rate of 230, hit that many sixes, be that consistent in the entirety of the IPL. It is still one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen.

Today’s youngsters are exposed to T20 from the beginning, whereas when I was very young, it was Test matches. They grow up thinking about batting very much in a hyper aggressive mode. These younger guys can do things at their age that we wouldn’t have dreamt of at ours.

ALSO READ | Garry Sobers: cricket’s greatest — a legacy beyond numbers

Yes, even Sachin Tendulkar didn’t hit as many sixes, for all his genius. Sooryavanshi is a product of the T20 era of cricket.

Correct. So he will have to learn the game the other way around. He will have to learn how to bat time, to defend. In our generation, it was the opposite. We would have to spend a lot of time learning how to hit the ball.

How do you recall your masterpiece — 173 not out in 2001?

My main memory is about that summer, really. I wasn’t expecting to play Test cricket again. I got an opportunity and I played 42 Tests in a row. I had completely changed my game.

Your father helped, didn’t he?

That is right. The biggest thing I remember is the relationship I had with my dad in the winter of 2001. I called him and said, ‘Dad, I am hating playing cricket.’ Something that I had always loved. Now I was hating it. And I said to him — ‘Treat me as though I have never played the game before.’ So we went right back to the beginning. He really taught me how to hold the bat, how to stand, the whole thing. We changed my grip. We changed my stance. We changed my backlift. Everything. We went back to zero. Like I was five years old. And we worked like that for about three months. And then I luckily got back into the team. I had made a few runs playing for Surrey. A few injuries in the England camp before the Ashes started, and I got in.

How much does that knock, which came against Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie, mean to you?

Ah, it was huge. You wouldn’t be talking to me if it hadn’t been for that. And I wouldn’t be working in TV either. So that innings changed everything. It was the greatest day.

And how was the coach’s reaction?

I know my dad was in tears when [BBC] Test Match Special called him up.

The players you like to watch these days?

I actually love watching K.L. Rahul. I think he is a sensational player. Really classy. Harry Brook is fabulous to watch when he is in. Joe Root, too. And Travis Head — you can’t take your eyes off the screen when he is batting.

You have played against some of the greatest bowlers in history. Who were the most challenging among them?

Blimey! Curtly Ambrose. Him and Courtney Walsh. And then you had, obviously, Shane Warne. Glenn McGrath. Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan].

Among the Indians?

Harbhajan [Singh] and [Anil] Kumble, on those tracks.

And the batters you admired?

[Brian] Lara was sort of the king around about those times. Fellow left-hander, so I greatly admired him. Then the guys like [Ricky] Ponting, Sachin [Tendulkar], obviously. I remember applauding Ricky from second slip at the WACA, much to the annoyance of Nasser Hussain, who was standing next to me at slip. He glared at me. I was just standing there going, ‘Oh man, that’s good’. There were a lot of great players around, like the South Africans, Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith.

Is there cause for concern about the future of Test cricket?

Yeah, of course, there is. What you would like is to have eight to ten teams who are competing on a level playing field. If only England, Australia and India are playing each other, the game is starting to eat itself, you know.

Eventually, one of the great things about all of the series that go around is that you are anticipating and you are excited about the idea about playing this team at this venue. But if it is the same three teams the whole time, it is not that exciting.

What has happened in the modern era is that the gap between the countries that have plenty of finances and the rest has got wider. The competition has perhaps thinned out a little bit in recent times. And that is a huge shame, that finances have meant that a lot of countries, the West Indies, being the most obvious example simply because of their dominance [in the past], have suffered.

South Africa are kind of hanging in there. They are still producing a lot of players and they still manage just about to keep enough of their most talented players to play Tests. But in places like Sri Lanka and the West Indies, they find it very difficult to keep their best players who disappear off to earn more money playing T20. And that is a problem for the world game.

The First Class game and the structures that produce Test Match cricketers are strong in some places and not very strong at all in others.

Your thoughts on Bazball?

I have been critical of it at times. In the game of cricket, the Test match is the game. And they tried to do something that was going to take the game to a different place. But Test match cricket kind of fought against it a little bit. Because when it came down to it, in the big games against the likes of India and Australia, it didn’t work. And so, Test match cricket is kind of greater than any idea that people might have around how you play it.

And Test cricket is the greatest form of sport.

It is. The sport itself dictates to you what is necessary. And if you push too hard, the game will bite you back. And that is what happened. There is as much pleasure to be taken from a really hard-fought draw sometimes as there is from smashing it all over the park.

ALSO READ | Cricket World Cup – Will expansion lead to elevation?

The women got to play a Test at Lord’s, finally.

This has come about because the world has decided, well, you know, this is a great game of cricket, right? Why would we want to stop 50% of the world’s population from enjoying and playing the sport that we think is a great sport? And so that opportunity is now there and what you are seeing is a product of that.

Players in the women’s game that you enjoy watching?

I like Smriti Mandhana’s batting. She is just an incredibly graceful player. So easy on the eye. Very, very lovely to watch. She plays pace and spin equally well. She reminds me of David Gower, in fact. Harmanpreet Kaur is very good to watch, too. And Jemimah Rodrigues is a fine technician.

Besides cricket, music is your other passion. And you had the opportunity of performing with Sarah Brightman, one of the greatest voices of our time.

It was good fun, singing some of Sarah’s favourite songs on live television. It was kind of nerve-racking, but it was good.

Giving due credit: Brook was vocal about McCullum’s contribution as a Test coach.
| Photo Credit: AP

England’s Ben Stokes
| Photo Credit: Action Images via Reuters

England coach Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum and skipper Ben Stokes see cricket as entertainment, feel they owe something to the spectators
| Photo Credit: Gareth Copley

Former England captain Michael Vaughan. File
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Former skipper Michael Vaughan fears not all England players have fully adapted to the existing team culture and feels the backroom staff is “made up of cheerleaders”.

Vaughan suggested England must carry out an honest review of their 1-4 mauling in India by taking a leaf out of Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola’s book to breed an environment of ruthlessness.

India completed a magnificent series triumph with an innings and 64-run victory inside three days in the fifth and final Test here on Saturday.

“After a humbling series defeat in India, I strongly believe that a dose of honesty is the most important thing for this England team right now,” Vaughan wrote in his column for Daily Telegraph.

Vaughan, who led the Test team from 2003-08, added, “I don’t believe they need to rip everything up. They are better playing this way than they would be otherwise.

“I respect what they are trying to do, and get up early every day to watch them because they have me on the edge of my seat and I know something is going to happen.

“The great frustration is that they have the talent to be really competitive all over the world but they have blown two big series and in this case it was because their batting failed miserably.” Accusing the team management of going too soft on players, Vaughan said he understands that there is a pervading sense of positivity, fun and laughter in the camp but that may not always bring the desired results.

“Every interview you hear the same stuff, about excitement, opportunity and fun, that everyone is having the time of their life.

“I have been around many of them in the last couple of years and their language can be inspiring. I admire some of it, but I can be a bit of an old cynic, and I worry that they are speaking a language that not all of them truly believe, which is dangerous.

“Certain players will believe it, but not everyone. We can’t all think the same.” He added, “Victories are what keep the fun bus on the road, not endlessly talking about how much fun you are having.

“The truth is that this can’t always be fun, because it’s so hard. Positivity is good, and inspiring, but honesty is also required.”

Vaughan said those running the team must not shy away from taking tough calls and for that, they don’t need to look beyond Guardiola.

“The team message is never to doubt anything, never admit they were wrong or they could have done things differently. Everything is very cosy. Everyone is mates: players, coaches, backroom staff. That does not breed an environment of ruthlessness.

“I know I bang on about how brilliant Pep Guardiola is, but you don’t hear about him being mates with Manchester City players. He’s their boss and he doesn’t always do what his players want him to.” “He makes ruthless decisions about selection and training regimes.”

Vaughan was least amused with the English players spending time in Abu Dhabi and playing golf in Bengaluru when there were long breaks between Tests.

“England’s management give the players just about everything that they want, like a break in Abu Dhabi with no cricket kit and a golf trip to Bangalore in the middle of the tour.

“I am not one for old-school preparation, with three first-class matches at the start of a tour. Those days are gone, and it’s not needed. But surely with two long breaks, you need to get some cricket into the outside of the team, so they are ready if required, and to keep those in the XI on their toes.

“It also might help players in the team find form. By doing nothing, you get yourself into a Catch 22.”

He added, “I do worry it’s a backroom team made up of cheerleaders. That’s based on what I hear in public, and maybe it’s different in the changing room, but players need challenging and questioning at times.”

India’s captain Rohit Sharma.
| Photo Credit: PTI

A relaxed Rohit Sharma, with the series in the bag, was at his candid best as he reflected on the four Tests so far. He termed it “a series of comebacks” for his triumphant team. Rohit went on to admit that he did not know what Bazball meant. The India skipper was at his witty best on Wednesday.

When reminded of England opener Ben Duckett’s view that some of the Indian batters could be influenced by the Bazball, Rohit said: “There was this guy called Rishabh Pant in our team… probably, Ben Duckett hasn’t seen him bat.”

On the eve of the final Test, Rohit spoke about the lessons learnt.

“I didn’t study much in school but I do study the opposition a lot while playing cricket. I enjoy that process of learning as a batter and captain. Ahead of any series, I have always tried to understand both teams and plan accordingly. I have multiple duties. Firstly, I am a batter. If I get out, I need to plan who to promote up the order. On the field, it’s about gauging the wicket according to our bowling strength.

“This is a series of comebacks and we made good comebacks, from being down in one session to dominating the next. After losing the first Test, despite being ahead in the game, we absorbed pressure and put it back on the opposition.

“This has been satisfying, especially with a group of boys who have not been under such pressure. International cricket pressure is different and Test cricket is totally different. A lot of players handled it well, stabilised the team and put it ahead. The last Test was a perfect example of our good comebacks.”

Rohit’s take on Bazball was also candid. “I honestly don’t know what Bazball means — whether it is to go and strike, whether it’s to defend or wait for a loose ball. I haven’t seen wild swings from anyone. England have played better cricket than the last series that they played here. You got to give credit to their batters who got big hundreds here. They applied their methods to get success and they got it.

“I still don’t know what that (Bazball) means.”