‘But I love winning more’- Former England great praises England team’s ‘Bazball' approach despite admitting its failure against big teams

The England Test team saw a period of turmoil after they lost the 2021 Ashes in Australia in a humiliating manner. But since the duo of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum took the management reign of the England test setup, they have raised their bar in the test format and emerged with the new ‘Bazball’ approach which has made them catch eyeballs wherever they go.

But after the recent loss against India, England’s veteran cricketer Geoffrey Boycott has praised England’s aggressive approach but has also questioned the lack of series wins in the reign of the new leadership of Stokes and McCullum. 

While writing in a column for The Telegraph, Boycott stated, “Bazball has given Test cricket a shot in the arm and England deserves praise for that. At times, I love it. But I love winning more and England has failed to beat the best two teams in the world: Australia and now India.” 

Boycott questions Stokes's captaincy tactics

Boycott also questioned the captaincy tactics of Ben Stokes during the 4th test at Ranchi. He believed that Stokes missed a trick by opening the bowling with two spinners in India’s fourth innings chase of 192 runs as they leaked too many runs in the start which gave the Indian innings much impetus.

Boycott wrote, “England only had 192 to defend. I like Stokes’s captaincy but I thought he made a big error by opening the bowling with two spinners, Root and Tom Hartley. In 25 minutes at the end of day three India easily scored 40 priceless runs. What is just as important is that it gave their innings momentum. It was imperative to make runs hard to come by.”

‘Bazball’ hasn’t provided substantial results for England

Although ‘Bazball’ approach has given them a considerable amount of success in the longest format and has made them an exciting team to watch if we measure the success of this approach in terms of series wins then will find that England hasn’t achieved much in the last two years. 

The only series that came under the management of Stokes and McCullum was under Pakistan, where they cleanly swept the series by 3-0. Apart from that they only managed to draw the Ashes against Australia by 2-2 at home and let Australia retain the ashes. They recently also lost the series against as they are trailing by 3-1 in a five-match series which has almost thwarted their chances of qualifying for the WTC final for the third time in a row.