Overall, Bazball is about batting. It is the area of the England team that causes the most vociferous debate. Devastating at their best, the collective failures of England’s batters have led to their most calamitous defeats.
Take Ben Duckett, for example. He is the first England opener to score more than 1,000 runs in a calendar year since Alastair Cook in 2016. A favourite McCullum trope is to point out that successful England openers get knighted. If we ignore Sirs Chef and Andrew Strauss, the last to pass 1,000 in a year was Marcus Trescothick in 2005.
By many measures, Duckett is a success, yet he is also the man who ran down the track and hacked Tim Southee onto his own stumps on the third evening in Hamilton. Perhaps we can’t have one without the other. It is Bazball in microcosm.
While Duckett is not under pressure, his opening partner is. Zak Crawley is to Matt Henry what David Warner was to Broad. Crawley has not reached 30 in his past 10 knocks. Of all players to have at least 84 goes at opening the batting in Test cricket, as Crawley has, only ex-Zimbabwe batter Grant Flower has a worse average than Crawley’s 29.59.
England are all-in on Crawley. Like the broken clock that is right twice a day, they are banking on his time to come against India and Australia. Given what he did to them at Old Trafford in 2023, Australia would be pretty pleased if Crawley is not walking out in Perth in a year’s time.
Below Crawley, England’s Ashes picture may have been shaped by a man born in Surrey, playing for New Zealand.
Will O’Rourke’s terrifying spell on the fourth day in Hamilton was everything England can expect in Australia. Pace, bounce and hostility. It was best dealt with not by Joe Root or Harry Brook, the two best batters in the world, but 21-year-old Bethell.
In his three Tests, Bethell has shown a calmness at first-drop Ollie Pope would love to have. Before the Wellington Test, Stokes said he expected Pope to return to number three for the home summer. After Hamilton, McCullum had the opportunity to back Pope, only to say Bethell has given England a “headache”. The rhetoric has changed.