Bazball


Bazball is an informal term that was coined by ESPN Cricinfo UK editor Andrew Miller during the 2022 English cricket season to refer to the style of play developed by the England cricket team in Test matches following the appointments of Brendon McCullum as Test head coach and Ben Stokes as Test captain by English cricket managing director Rob Key in May 2022.
The Bazball style and mindset is said to have an emphasis on taking decisions in attack and defence, whether batting or in the field, that create "positive" cricket to push game towards decisive results in an attempt by England to win more games. These tactical choices have included riskier shot selection as individual players, aggressive batting in match positions where defensive play would be the normal style, declarations in situations where most teams would have continued to bat and avoiding overly defensive bowling choices. The core element of this style was a significant increase in their scoring run rate, which included breaking the record for the highest run rate in a completed Test innings by scoring at 6.5 runs per over for 101 overs against Pakistan in 2022, finishing their first innings on 657 runs. This broke a record that had stood since 1902, with England scoring at a high run rate in many subsequent innings. Many of these skills and strategies were developed in playing One Day International and Twenty20 matches.
The style has had mixed results. Successes against New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies were offset by an away series loss and home series draw against India, an away series loss to Pakistan and a failure to regain The Ashes against Australia with England drawing their home series in 2023 followed in 2025 by a devastating trio of losses in the opening three matches of the five match tour of Australia in 2025.

Origins

Name

The name "Bazball" was coined by ESPN Cricinfo UK editor Andrew Miller on an episode of the Switch Hit podcast. This came after McCullum's appointment as England Test cricket coach, in May 2022. McCullum himself has voiced concern that the term can't express the nuances of the England team's approach or his management style. The name, however, has picked up increasing use across the wider cricketing media. McCullum after whom the term is named also dislikes the name 'Bazball'. He said "I don't really like that silly term... I don't have any idea what ‘Bazball’ is. It's not just all crash and burn."
Baz is derived from Brendon McCullum's longstanding nickname. As a player he was renowned for his aggressive stroke play, and during his tenure as New Zealand captain, he led highly successful period characterised by an attacking approach. This approach, Steve McMorran wrote in Associated Press, meant McCullum managed "to upend the Black Caps' traditional conservative approach and underdog mindset."
McCullum's tenure as England's coach marked a turning point in the fortunes of the England Test cricket team. Before the appointments of Stokes and McCullum, the side had won only one of the last seventeen Test matches played under the previous captain Joe Root, who was "emotionally shattered after leading a struggling side through two difficult years which included multiple tours with testing COVID-enforced restrictions". With no dramatic change to the players selected, England "against all odds" experienced success: "their bowlers rose to the challenge, taking 20 wickets in six of the seven Test matches, while their batsmen scored at unprecedented pace. England won six of their seven Tests this summer, their second-most in a single season anywhere in the world." Only once had they won more, and in the time since "they had not even matched six wins, let alone bettered it."

Style

One aspect of Bazball is batsmen taking the skills learned and honed playing one-day cricket and transposing them into the longer form, and traditionally slower, Test match game. Tim Wigmore in The Daily Telegraph wrote that the "path to Bazball runs directly from" the England captaincy of Eoin Morgan in the white-ball form of the game who had overseen a period of success for England, including victory in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. During Morgan's first summer of captaincy of the England One Day International team he had urged his team to adopt more of the no-fear approach of the touring New Zealand side captained by Baz McCullum. For his part, Morgan told cricket journalist Firdose Moonda of ESPN Cricinfo that cricket from the Ben Stokes-Brendon McCullum partnership was "some of the best Test match series I've ever watched in my life" and that it was in the process of altering the notions and ideas that had been in place since the inaugural Test in 1877, saying "What England have proved this year is that you can play Test cricket in that fashion...It's made for unbelievable entertainment. It's created a new level of interest and proved that you don't have to play Test cricket one way, particularly as a batsman, which for, I suppose the 150 years, has always been one way."
Ben Stokes said the style was discussed from his very first meeting as captain with McCullum, with Stokes telling the media that "I have been thinking stuff like that but the first chat with Baz was 'yeah we can do it this way – why not?'... It has taken away all the external pressures of playing international sport. There's enough on individuals and as a team as it is but taking all the other stuff away is why everything is so relaxed, calm and enjoyable at the moment." He used the example of bowling at Rishabh Pant when he scored a century at greater than a run a ball, saying "The more we see players like that succeed, the more the negativity around that type of Test cricket will eventually die out because it is so exciting to watch, because cricket is an entertainment business. Yes, you want results but you want people to enjoy watching a spectacle. Yes, cricket has always been a spectacle but it's about doing it differently now. So yeah, cheers Rishabh." Cricket writer Huw Tuberville writing in The Cricketer in September 2022 said "I worry that Stokes' batting aggression – CricViz says he attacked 41 per cent of balls this summer compared to 24 per cent in 2019 – is underselling his talents."
Former Australian fast bowler Glenn McGrath drew parallels with the style of the McCullum-Stokes England team with his own Australian cricket team of the 1990s, but boosted by the changes brought about by one-day cricket, saying "The team I was lucky enough to play in, we just backed ourselves and played without fear. I think T20, if it's brought anything to cricket is players, especially batsmen, have to go out there and play without fear and that's moved up through ODIs to Test cricket and they're starting to play that way. To me, that's the way everyone should play cricket. When you've got a team that goes out there and backs themselves, they play without fear and it's amazing what you can achieve. With Brendon McCullum coming in, I think he's definitely bought that attitude."
Kerry O'Keefe, a former Australian cricketer, directly links the 2014 death of Phillip Hughes to the development of Bazball.

Mindset

Ali Martin in The Guardian described the Bazball philosophy as "play positive red-ball cricket; to soak up pressure when required but also be brave enough to put it back on opponents at the earliest opportunity; to make taking wickets the sole aim in the field; and to strive chiefly for victory across the five days without considering the draw."
Cricket writer Chris Stocks identified seven principles of Bazball that could be promoted by a cricket coach in a team environment at the highest level of the game. They are:
  1. A less reflective environment
  2. No negative chat
  3. A win-at-all-costs mentality
  4. No fear of failure
  5. Praise – even for the little things
  6. Simplicity of message
  7. Embracing mental freedom and fun
Stocks quoted veteran pace bowler Stuart Broad discussing the mental side of McCullum's approach when he said: "There's no doubt Baz has had an impact already. It's a very positive language in the changing room. It's very forward thinking. All about how to move this game forward."

Impact on Test matches

2022: Run chases

The change in style of play produced immediate results in the summer of 2022. The England Test match side were playing a three-match series against New Zealand and a one-off Test against India to conclude a previous series postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous summer, India and New Zealand had competed in the 2021 ICC World Test Championship Final. However, England in the summer of 2022 won all four matches chasing a total in the fourth innings, three against New Zealand and one against India, with those fourth innings chases being 277, 299, 296 and 378 runs. They became the first side in Test history to chase three scores of 250-plus in back-to-back games against New Zealand, and the first England side to ever win four consecutive Test matches batting last. Stokes as captain upon winning the toss began routinely in the summer of 2022 choosing to chase, something which goes against the orthodoxy in Test cricket but is the orthodoxy in limited-overs cricket.

Fast scoring rates

Since the inception of the style until June 2023, England averaged a run rate of 4.65 per over. This is significantly higher than the next highest in Test match history – Australia under Steve Waugh at 3.66. This has meant the team has bucked the trend of victorious sides of Test matches usually requiring 140 or more overs to win. On 1 December 2022, England reached a total of 506–4 at the end of first day's play in a Test match against Pakistan. These runs came in 75 overs at a run rate of 6.75, an unprecedented rate record in Test cricket. Had England faced the full 90 overs of a day's play at that run rate they would have passed 600. The previous record for the most runs on day one of a match was 494 set by Australia against South Africa 112 years previously in 1910. This innings also included England's highest ever total in the first session of a Test, Zak Crawley scoring the most runs in the first over of an innings ever by an England player, Crawley and Ben Duckett scoring the fastest ever England century opening stand, Crawley and Duckett scoring the fastest opening double-century partnership in Test cricket history, Harry Brook scoring England's third fastest century of all time, and Crawley scoring the fastest ever by an England opener and the fifth fastest overall.
The desire to score quickly has been noted to have had an impact on the batting of Stokes himself who on occasion was "one batsman who has, perhaps, taken things too far on occasion... and fallen cheaply." England batsmen have also demonstrated innovation when facing Test match bowlers, such as Joe Root playing reverse-ramp shots against pace bowling, and batting left-handed.