More than a year ago, Brendon McCullum had promised a “refined” approach after receiving a 4-1 series drubbing in India.
The England head coach had admitted that they had “got a bit of work to do” while continuing with their Bazball style of aggressive cricket. Things didn’t work out that way since Ben Stokes’ men didn’t face much opposition in the Tests since.
A rude awakening at Edgbaston last week has forced them to take a relook at their flamboyant strategy again. They rode a bit of luck which papered over some cracks on way to winning the opening Test of this series in Headingley.
But the home team seems to have learnt from their mistakes following Akash
Deep and Mohammed Siraj’s incisive spells in the second Test. An uncharacteristically
sedate start saw England reach 251/4 at stumps on the opening day of the Lord’s Test.
Nasser Hussain termed it “old-fashioned cricket” while Mike Atherton called it an “anti-Bazball day”. Zak Crawley did try at times to be adventurous in the opening session by coming down the wicket against Akash, but not with much luck.
Once Nitish Kumar Reddy removed Crawley and Ben Duckett in a single over, Joe Root and Ollie Pope were back to blunting the attack, focusing on rotating the strike and content with leaving balls outside the off stump. The pair added 109 off 211 balls.
The greenish tinge on the wicket wasn’t ideal for the quick-scoring template that has come to be associated with Stokes’ team and instead required an old-fashioned grind.
The stump microphones even picked up Siraj telling Root that he wanted to see some ‘Bazball’ but England didn’t fall into the trap and stayed clear of their usual attacking intent with the bat.
“No more entertaining cricket, lads,” Shubman Gill was heard telling his teammates after Pope left a ball outside his off stump. “Welcome back to the boring Test cricket.”
The run-scoring was reduced to a snail’s pace on Thursday and Root and Pope went through a phase where there were no runs scored for over four overs consecutively. The run-rate of 3.02 was hardly in conformity with Bazball’s attacking approach.
It was only during Root and Stokes’ unbroken stand that they recovered some flair.
