Parts of the script for the series ahead were written during the tour of 2021, and India’s visits to England that year and the next
Andrew Miller23-Jan-2024There’s nothing new about Bazball, you might say. Two decades have elapsed since Virender Sehwag started blazing run-a-ball 300s for fun, and even the sepia-tinged Gilbert Jessop made a 76-ball century way back in 1902 that remains tantalisingly out of reach for England’s Baz-racers. So it’s little wonder that England’s apparent reinvention of the wheel has received quite so much pushback of late.Nevertheless there’s something especially compelling about the series that’s looming before us. Not simply because England are arriving with a plan that has proven its worth in two away campaigns in Pakistan and New Zealand last winter, but because so much of the action that is due to unfold across these five Tests was rehearsed, in defeat as much as victory, in their two most recent tussles with India, at home and away in 2021 and 2022.On the face of it, much has changed for England since their last Test series in India, which took place in the grip of the Covid outbreak in February and March 2021. Most symbolically, there’s no place at the top of the order for the look-before-you-leap pairing of Rory Burns and Dom Sibley, though the latter’s sheet-anchor 87 from 286 balls in the first innings of the series was nonetheless instrumental to his team’s solitary victory.Related
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What’s also gone, however, is the air of stultifying pessimism that was set in motion at the back end of that series. It’s easily forgotten that England had won six Tests in a row in Asia going into the second Test of that India tour. Joe Root’s masterful batting form won the last three of those almost singlehandedly, in Galle and Chennai, while prior to that, in the winter of 2018-19, England’s 3-0 win in Sri Lanka had been secured by a broadly similar set of players, and with an innovative style of “total cricket” – encompassing deep batting strength and bowlers for all occasions – that could almost be regarded as a Bazball prototype.What happened next was instructive for all manner of different reasons. England’s trio of losses in the final three Tests, in Chennai and Ahmedabad, set in motion an extraordinarily bleak ten-month run of one win in 17 matches – exacerbated by the strictures of Covid bubbles, no doubt, but culminating in the 4-0 Ashes crushing the following winter, which confirmed the inevitable end of Root’s tenure as captain. That mini-era truly was the darkness before the dawn from which Bazball would emerge, and the rest quickly became history as Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum set about the psychological reinvigoration of their team’s self-worth.Pant vs Leach in Chennai was Bazball before it had a name: 48 runs came in 21 deliveries•BCCIBut the curious truth about that period is that England knew – both from their prior success, and from the speed of their subsequent revival – that they were capable of better (and braver) cricket, but they just could not access the mindset required to liberate their strokeplay and, as per the oft-mocked mantra of the current regime, “run towards the danger”.And no matter what impression they might give in public, India know from personal experience – on their two legs of the Covid-interrupted Test tour in 2021 and 2022 – that England’s turnaround in fortunes is no fluke of circumstance.In the first four Tests of that series in 2021 (and notwithstanding a James Anderson swing masterclass at Headingley) the hosts were routinely bullied by an outstanding India team playing in the uncompromising image of its then captain, Virat Kohli – most vehemently in their statement victory in the second Test, at Lord’s, when England’s resolve crumbled in the third and fourth innings. Twelve months later, however, those same timid also-rans were hunting down 378 at Edgbaston at close to five an over to square the series with unparalleled style.The naysayers will argue that there’s a world of difference between a victory canter on a flat deck in Birmingham and the trial by spin that seems certain to be waiting for them in India these next few weeks. But the need for bravery in Test cricket is universal, and crucially, many of the same players who were swept aside three years ago will recognise that their own loss of nerve was a crucial factor in such an abrupt series turnaround.Statement victory: India take the final wicket at Lord’s in 2021•AFP/Getty ImagesWhen the going was good in the opening Test in Chennai, England played an unequivocal blinder, first through Root’s outstanding 218 – his third massive hundred in as many England wins – and then, with a formidable 578 to push against, a bowling display that showcased the sort of hand-to-hand combat that has come to epitomise the Bazball era.Jofra Archer won’t be present this time around, but his influence on their tactics will surely live on. A superlative five-over new-ball burst evoked his MVP displays for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL: Archer scalped both of India’s openers, including the soon-to-be-peerless Rohit Sharma, with a relentlessly accurate yet subtly varied diet of raw pace, cutters and assorted sleight of hand.And then, with those early wickets in the bag and enough runs in reserve to roll the dice against the middle order, came an extraordinary duel between the returning Jack Leach and the since sadly injured Rishabh Pant – one that foreshadowed the uncompromising pursuit of wickets that has become the other key feature of England’s new-found attitude.It resulted in Leach’s first eight overs being launched for 77 – “I thought I was playing in the IPL!” he joked afterwards – but the logic of the match-up was unimpeachable. With Leach extracting some appreciable turn from outside the left-hander’s off stump, and Pant trusting his methods to hit through the spin time and time again, the passage of play was not simply compelling, it was a potential harbinger of England’s own batting approach this time out. Pant’s strength was his weakness – it could get him out at any moment, so why stand on ceremony? Instead of dying in a hole, waiting for the ball with his name on it, he backed himself regardless and picked off the small matter of 91 from 88 balls in the process.Even though, on that occasion, Pant’s counterattack didn’t prove successful, it was the sort of proactivity that England were incapable of matching when India cranked up the spin settings for the final three Tests. Clearly R Ashwin and Axar Patel swiped the plaudits for the series turnaround, as they shared 50 of England’s 60 wickets in those three defeats. And yet, as Root proved in taking 5 for 8 in the first of the Ahmedabad Tests with his then-still-speculative offbreaks, the challenge of surmounting the conditions wasn’t simply confined to the visiting batters.Eat my dust: Rohit Sharma made 66 and 25 in the first Ahmedabad Test in 2021•BCCIEnter Rohit, whose magnificence at the top of the India order didn’t simply turn the series on its head, but also provided a pointer to his beaten opponents as to how to thrive in such invidious circumstances. By lunch on the first morning of the second Test, on a crumbly surface that was only going to get tougher, he’d cracked 80 runs out of 106 for 3, and 161 from 231 balls by the time of his extraction in the 73rd over.”Mentally before the game I was prepared for what I was facing once I get in,” Rohit said after that innings. “Be clear in your mind. You can’t be tentative.” A week later, he repeated the trick in even more extreme conditions in Ahmedabad, where his 66 and a run-a-ball 25 not out helped condemn England to defeat inside two days. Only Zak Crawley, fourth man out for 53 in an innings where no one else passed 17, came close to matching such transcendence. But notwithstanding his efforts, or the eventual speed of their loss, England still dribbled along to a total of 193 runs in 79.2 overs across two innings, their slowest run rate to that point for a completed Test since the start of 2020.Other factors ate into England’s competitiveness, not least the ECB’s rest-and-rotation policy that was designed to manage the players’ well-being during Covid but ended up denying them a first-choice XI at any stage of the winter. It created, also, a jam-tomorrow mentality within the squad at large – a sense that the team’s real challenge was always further down the track. It’s a trait that Stuart Broad in particular called out in a memorable tirade during the following winter’s Ashes, and one from which England have entirely pivoted, with their uncompromisingly consistent squad selection a defining feature of the Bazball ethos.None of which necessarily means that England are any better placed to avoid the fate that they, and pretty much every other visiting team, have endured since their most recent series win in India, in 2012-13. But that Chennai win three years ago was the second of only three home defeats that India have suffered in 46 matches since the start of 2013, and if it contained within it the seeds of a strategy that would lie dormant for the rest of the tour, then the manner in which Rohit and Pant ripped the series India’s way is perhaps even more instructive for the days ahead.