We’re here to make memories. We’re here to save Test cricket. Dream bigger. Nothing is out of reach. Also, “fuck off you fucking prick”.
The paradoxes of Bazball are already manifest, and indeed a huge part of the fun. Here we have the game of reinvention, where the only rule is to break all the rules. Play like it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, because that’s the best way to win. Dance like nobody’s watching so everyone can see what a great dancer you are. Is this still maverick thinking? Probably. It is, at the very least, an utterly engrossing spectacle.
As it was once again on a rain-shadowed third day at Edgbaston, midway through what is already an epic-scale Test. England and Australia managed a session and a bit here, on a day when another paradox presented itself. England are here to save Test cricket. In their own version of this story England are only ever the heroes. But what if they’re not?
One element missing so far from these Ashes is a genuine collision of old and new. What we haven’t had yet is some proper needle. And make no mistake, Australia are desperate to beat this Bazball England. To the extent that a beating may not be enough. Maybe only a crushing will do.
It is the only logical response to this thing, which feels from the outside like another version of the defining quality of most English sports teams, English exceptionalism, English self-mythology. “England are pricks to lose to,” Andrew Mehrtens famously pointed out, and English people have proved his point ever since by taking it as a compliment.
In the Stokes era England’s cricketers have found an even more annoying way to win. Now the English are trying to be the good guys. Not dry or cold. But fun and fiery and full of wonder. Imagine being told you’re too uptight by the England cricket captain. There they are, those starchy scions of Jardine, out there having more fun than you, lounging insolently on sofas, undermining your foundational seriousness in a bucket hat.
Another paradox: Bazball is modern and disruptive. But Bazball is also a very vivid recreation of the oldest kind of Englishness: the amateur spirit, the idea of effortless superiority, of aristo energy against the professionals, taking a bat out of the Lord’s museum and scoring a hundred. Imagine losing to this.
Not that Australia’s current team are particularly old school. There are plenty of more stentorian voices back home who would see this iteration as soft or woke: climate change believers, betrayers of JL, too novel, too relatable, too nice, too Pat-ball. Still, though. You can only push it so far.
“Our vision as a team is far greater than just results,” Paul Collingwood could be heard telling the press conference room on Saturday night, before moving on to England’s wider mission to save Test cricket by making it more entertaining than you, the current world champions, have been able to manage.
At some point this kind of stuff is going to become a provocation. There was a sense of phoney war in the first innings as Australia adjusted their fields and accommodated England’s aggression. But on a third day sawn off at the midpoint there was still time for two wonderful passages of play that brought that basic tension a little closer to the surface.
First England skittled Australia’s lower order, taking four for 14 in 21 balls before lunch. It was a sequence begun by some blue-sky thinking from Ben Stokes; and also by Ollie Robinson telling the bloke who brought his daughter into the press conference on Saturday night that he’s a fucking prick who should fuck off.
Usman Khawaja was still at the crease on 141. Australia were 372 for six with thoughts of a significant lead. So England went with the U9s umbrella field, the kind of field that was banned a couple of years back by the Surrey county age groups, with an insistence teams must have proper fielders so the game looks proper.
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Well, here’s the Ben Stokes and he says it’s fine. England placed six fielders close in front of the wicket, crouched like matching inverted slip cordons. Robinson bowled an off-stump yorker. Khawaja reached, got an inside edge and sent his leg stump flying, drawing wild cheers and also that surprisingly pointless send-off (Khawaja is, on a point of fact, not a prick). But it was a brilliant moment, made just a little more real by something strangely, shamefully authentic in the middle of all this free jazz.
Nathan Lyon was bounced out soon after playing his last remaining shot, the hook for six. Scott Boland was confronted with a very short silly mid-on and silly mid-off, taking guard like a pagan god worshipped by men in blue helmets. He prodded the ball straight up in the air. Pat Cummins was slow-bounced out by Robinson.
It felt like a brilliant half-hour of captaincy, four wickets taken with innovative plans. At the same time it involved getting Lyon, Boland and Cummins out, rabbit pie Bazball. These are the paradoxes.
It seems fair to err on the side of brilliance. It is easy to underestimate how exhausting it must be producing constant energy and field changes. Stokes basically did six hours of T20 captaincy on Saturday. To still have that freshness at the end of the next morning was highly impressive.
There was more spice when England came out to bat. Australia bowled with real vim and dismissed both openers. There was whooping, loud appeals, aggression close in. No singles were offered. Words were exchanged. This felt, finally, like a front-on collision, one that might only reveal itself fully whenever Robinson next comes out to bat. Perhaps Australia can save Test cricket, too. Welcome, chaps, to the cause.
