Crunch time for Bazball: Is it now or never for England's cricketing revolution?
It is the ultimate examination of the most exciting and dynamic brand of Test cricket that has arguably been played.
Five Tests against India, starting today at Headingley (Friday), and then another five in Australia this winter will decide if England truly have reinvented cricket's longest and most traditional format, or whether the high-octane, high-risk methods of captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum, will fall short of providing the big series victories they need to validate their Test revolution.
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These two series will define the legacy of Stokes and McCullum, and their style, known as 'Bazball', like nothing that has come before in three highly entertaining and largely successful years in tandem.
England may have beaten India spectacularly at Edgbaston, Birmingham, in the heady early days of their reign in July 2022, in what was the final Test of a series postponed from the summer before because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enjoyed a dramatic drawn home Ashes series against Australia in 2023.
But if Stokes and McCullum are going to be regarded as the greatest as well as the most fun of them all, they need to add a series victory against India or Australia — preferably both — to their CVs over the next seven months.
'There's always a different buzz when you come up against India and Australia, purely because of how big the series are,' said Stokes on Thursday in the Leeds sunshine as he contemplated the challenges ahead. 'We know what these series mean, but defining my career as England captain isn't something I sit here and think about.
'If that was the way I felt and that was what I was bothered about, then it would be utterly selfish, and that isn't me. I tend not to worry about what people are going to say about me and the job I've done when it all comes to an end.'
Plenty has been said about the way Stokes and McCullum have gone about their business, because England have been playing Test cricket their own pioneering way in recent years. A way that is more adventurous and attacking than any side in history, with only Steve Waugh-captained Australia two decades ago, who were known for their positivity — as well as their huge amount of success — coming anywhere near.
After being thrown together by the England team's new managing director, Rob Key, Stokes and McCullum took a team that had become passive and dull under the captaincy of Joe Root, winning just one of 17 Tests, and transformed them.
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In their first summer together, England won six out of seven Tests, successfully chasing down what traditionally would have been difficult targets four times, and scored runs during their first year up until June 2023 at 4.65 per over.
The peak of Bazball, to date, arrived in December 2022, when England smashed 506 for four in 75 overs at a rate of 6.75 on the first day of their series against Pakistan in Rawalpindi, becoming the first side to score more than 500 runs in a day of Test cricket.
They were not afraid to defy convention in other ways, too.
Stokes made the earliest first innings declaration in Ashes history in the first Test of the 2023 series, calling England in after 78 overs with his best batter, Root, unbeaten on 118.
The idea was to have four overs at Australia before the first day ended, but England failed to take a wicket and ended up losing that thrilling Edgbaston match by two wickets in the final overs of the fifth day — a dampener on the funkiness of Bazball.
It could be argued England have been a little more conventional since an Ashes series they almost certainly would have won after being 2-0 down but for the torrential rain that sentenced the fourth Test in Manchester to what is still the only draw in the Stokes-McCullum era. And Stokes spoke of "adapting better" in the difficult moments.
"Sometimes, when we've been behind the game, we've not given ourselves the best chance of getting back into it, and that's an area we've looked at," he said.
But England under the pair will never take the defensive option and Stokes goes into this pivotal series as the most successful England captain to have led the team in more than 30 Tests, winning 20 of his 33 games in charge at a success rate of 60.6.
The man at the top of English cricket, ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) chair Richard Thompson, is delighted with what he has been watching.
"They've taken the oldest format pretty much of any sport and, to some extent, reinvented it by playing in a far more attacking way, with bat and ball and tactically," Thompson tells The Athletic. "They have made some incredibly bold calls and Ben's direct ability to make players believe they can win is extraordinary. I saw Adam Hollioake do that at Surrey, but Ben has taken it to another level. There are nuances that Baz (McCullum) brings in around that, too.
"Sky Sports has seen a real uplift in a younger audience watching cricket since this started. It's so exciting. Take last year. We had a really wet, miserable summer, and we were competing with the Olympics for attention. Commercially, we weren't playing the strongest opposition in the West Indies and Sri Lanka, but it sold like crazy, and India this year sold out every Test within days.
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"If you look at any pictures of Test cricket in the 1970s, invariably, there were very few people there. The 1950s and 1960s were huge, but there was a period when Test cricket was really dying. Look at it now."
The praise is vindication for the decision of former England batsman and Kent captain Key to give up a burgeoning broadcasting career with Sky to take on what had proved a poisoned chalice with the national men's team.
"When we started, English cricket was in a pretty low place and I'm incredibly proud of what those two (Stokes and McCullum) have achieved and the way they've gone about it,' Key tells The Athletic. "You've got established players, and a lot at the start and middle of their international journey, and Ben and Brendon are maximising their potential.
"Look at the games we've won and the style they've gone about their cricket. You want players to be positive and play in a way that will be more enjoyable for them. And I don't think the team have realised that potential yet because they can get better and better. That's what I'm proudest of."
The term Bazball — McCullum's nickname is Baz — was coined by the English journalist Andrew Miller in 2022 and quickly stuck, but it is still one that the players and management themselves reject.
"I don't have any idea what 'Bazball' is," McCullum said in a radio interview that same year when it became clear the label was not going away. "It's not just all crash and burn."
Key agrees.
"I remember when I first saw that term. Brendon said, 'Where's this Bazball come from?'. I said, 'What's going to be funny about this is what they are praising us for at the moment, they will ask us to defend at some point. They're going to ask us to defend this term that we never came up with in the first place'.
"To us, it's just about creating an environment players can thrive in, not Bazball. I just believe you've got more of a chance to succeed if you think positively, if you see the opportunity, if you look to score runs and then survive after that. In the simplest terms, the brain works quicker, you're more alert, and you can make better decisions if you think positively. And that's in defence and attack.
"At times in English cricket, we feel the danger and the trouble. There have been times when we haven't even bought a raffle ticket — we don't even have a go. We die wondering sometimes. I wanted a team, and a captain, who would risk failure to succeed."
A fascinated observer of the Bazball revolution is Sussex coach Paul Farbrace, who was assistant England coach under Peter Moores and then Trevor Bayliss, and a leading figure in kickstarting the England one-day revolution that peaked with the 2019 World Cup success.
"It's very easy to talk about playing without fear and consequence and putting on a show, but doing it is the hardest thing to achieve," says Farbrace. "Getting a player to play without fear and anxiety is the greatest thing any coach can do, and I'm full of praise for Stokes and McCullum for the way they've allowed their players to go and play.
"They are consistent in terms of the personality and character of the players they want in their team. They don't care what the public perception is of how and who they pick. They choose who they think are the best to play their way.
"There have been times when it's been frustrating. Take the Lord's Test against Australia in 2023, when (Australia spin bowler) Nathan Lyon limped off (on day two) and it felt that was the time for England to go and grab the game, but they all got out trying to pull the short ball. It was an opportunity where they had to play the situation rather than keep on doing it their way.
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"So they've polarised opinion, but, ultimately, they have provided great entertainment and they've got more people watching Test cricket."
Key insists the suggestion that England are somehow evangelical in their approach may have been exaggerated.
"We're getting a bit too carried away with ourselves if we think we're the people who are going to save Test cricket," he says. "We just want it to be fun, enjoyable and have a team people want to come and see.
'Sport is escapism. People want to come and see unbelievably talented players doing things they can't do themselves. Our job is to create an environment where those talented people can thrive and have a story along the way that captures the imagination."
But England have had an effect on the wider game.
The overall scoring rates in Test cricket have risen since 2022, while even in England's County Championship, there is a push towards positivity, with fewer points awarded for drawn games from the start of the 2023 season and maximum batting points only available to teams who score at a rate of more than four an over.
"The game in general has moved forward as a result of what England are doing," says Farbrace. "People are trying to be more positive because they know that if they want to play for England, this is how they are going to have to play. If you are just going to occupy the crease for a period of time, you might not be selected.
"It has been a frustration for some when they've seen players get picked who haven't really done anything in county cricket. For instance, Jacob Bethell was chosen when he hadn't scored a hundred, and there might have been players like Joe Clarke at Notts (Nottinghamshire) and others looking at that thinking, 'What do I need to do to play for England?'.
"Shoaib Bashir was picked after Stokes saw him bowl six great deliveries on a social-media clip.
"But a lot of people who have scored lots of runs and taken lots of wickets at county level haven't been successful with England, and what this regime is saying is, 'We will pick players who we think can play the game at the highest level the way we want it played'."
The one major setback of the Bazball era was England's 4-1 series defeat in India early in 2024, which makes the following five matches against the same opponents and then the Ashes from November to January even more important. Bazball has to be seen to work against the best.
"We all know — and they know — they're going to be judged on the next six months," says Farbrace. "This is the defining moment for them. Every England team ultimately gets judged on an Ashes series, and the fact we haven't won one since 2015 and not won away since 2011 makes this winter the real test of what they are doing.
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"Everything hangs on the Ashes, and this India series will be a barometer of where they are and whether they're ready for it. If they can win against India and get a lot of confidence from it, then anything can happen in Australia."
Key prefers to play down the significance of England's next 10 Tests.
"These two series will define us for other people, but for us, not at all," he says. "This is the most exciting year of the time we've been doing this, but there's so much more than just two series for us.
"Everything we've done doesn't come down to this. It doesn't mean we haven't done some good stuff before this. I don't think the next year will define my career and my life, but it will be another incredible story to tell."
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