Boycott blasts Bazball: England are in danger of reducing the Ashes to an exhibition

[vvvslaxman]

You need energy to attack. When Lyon walked in England attack was a spent force. They had barely any energy to rattle Lyon. Bouncers were Harmless. They can attack with batting. Not sure whether they can attack "more" with their bowling given that they allowed tailenders to snatch the win from defeat. Cummins  batting probably has woken up Smith and Labu.

[sage]

https://www.tbsnews.net/sports/nasser-hussain-englands-approach-we-didnt-need-bazball-beat-australia-2001-654558

 

Nasser Hussain on England's approach: 'We didn’t need Bazball to beat Australia in 2001'

On a flat pitch with very little to offer the bowlers and rain eating away close to an entire day’s worth of play, Ben Stokes’s captaincy and experimentation forced a result — one which was very close to going in England’s favour, but that visiting captain Pat Cummins was able to overturn thanks to his steadiness and quality with the bat in the fourth innings.

 

 

[Nikhil_cric]

On 6/22/2023 at 10:32 AM, rkt.india said:

because that is not test cricket, scoop, reverse scoops, reverse sweeps. this ugly stuff is not test cricket. Do that how much you want in T20 but for a purist like me, it is ugly and is the beginning of the death of test cricket. it will be like playing T20 cricket for five days. i anyway despise T20 cricket.    

England don't have the players to win playing traditional Tests cricket. Test cricket will die with or without Bazball.  With the current inferior Dukes and the deliberate preparation of flat, fast pitches to aid Bazball, there won't be any difference betwenn white ball cricket and red ball cricket. That's actually going to hasten the death of test cricket - not revive it.

 

But this is the only way England are going to be competitive .

[vvvslaxman]

6 hours ago, Nikhil_cric said:

England don't have the players to win playing traditional Tests cricket. Test cricket will die with or without Bazball.  With the current inferior Dukes and the deliberate preparation of flat, fast pitches to aid Bazball, there won't be any difference betwenn white ball cricket and red ball cricket. That's actually going to hasten the death of test cricket - not revive it.

 

But this is the only way England are going to be competitive .

 

India's recently most successful match winner has been Pant. He resorts to these shots as well. It looks foolish when it doesn't come off. Having said that you can still be aggressive without fancy shots. Over the years several batsmen have played counter attacking knocks successfully when they were pushed to a corner. Kapil has done several times. Famous Tendulkar/Azharuddin partnership of 222 runs at Capetown, Then there was this partnerhip between Tendulkar and Sehwag after India being 5 down. Now England is doing from ball 1 by loading the side with batsmen. It is doable. May not be sustainable.  If they play traditional cricket they ain't winning anything.

[Nikhil_cric]

11 minutes ago, vvvslaxman said:

 

India's recently most successful match winner has been Pant. He resorts to these shots as well. It looks foolish when it doesn't come off. Having said that you can still be aggressive without fancy shots. Over the years several batsmen have played counter attacking knocks successfully when they were pushed to a corner. Kapil has done several times. Famous Tendulkar/Azharuddin partnership of 222 runs at Capetown, Then there was this partnerhip between Tendulkar and Sehwag after India being 5 down. Now England is doing from ball 1 by loading the side with batsmen. It is doable. May not be sustainable.  If they play traditional cricket they ain't winning anything.

It is not sustainable when everyone from 1 to 7 bats like that. Pant does it for India and Travis Head for Australia. Even then, I have seen Pant knuckle down and bide his time before launching or at least look to attack spinners while respecting the quicks etc.

 

The problem for England is that their best traditional openers are the likes Lees and Burns and they are clearly not international standard. So they have backed someone like Crawley whose defense is tailender level and backed him to play his aggressive game. 

 

The reasoning is very sound. CC is not producing high-quality Test openers. But we have explosive hitters and let's play to our strengths and at least take advantage of flat pitches whilst not being much worse on very seam-friendly wickets where our fast medium attack can win it for us.

 

Will they win everywhere and against fundamentally much better Test sides? Not really. But they'll do much better than they can playing traditional cricket. So, there's no reason not to play Bazball

[rollingstoned]

On 6/25/2023 at 7:18 PM, vvvslaxman said:

You need energy to attack. When Lyon walked in England attack was a spent force. They had barely any energy to rattle Lyon. Bouncers were Harmless. They can attack with batting. Not sure whether they can attack "more" with their bowling given that they allowed tailenders to snatch the win from defeat. Cummins  batting probably has woken up Smith and Labu.

Old bowlers who are all quite similar are not helped by flat pitches and little rest in between innings because of how fast they are scoring/getting out. Runs are vital no doubt but in test cricket time is a pretty importantly variable too which Is why draw is also as valid a result as a loss or win. 

[sage]

Boycott still fuming

 

[sage]