England will become more entertaining if they do not Bazball all the time

England slumped to one of their heaviest ever Test defeats against India in Rajkot – Reuters/Amt Dave

Although there has already been one excellent book on the subject of Bazball – The Inside Story of a Test Cricket Revolution, by my colleague Nick Hoult and Lawrence Booth, the Editor of Wisden – it will, in the nature of things, probably be some years before the full philosophical history of the strategy comes out. This is not because anyone involved in the development of this aggressive approach to a supposedly sedate game is keeping anything secret; it is because the way that history works is that some of the most significant aspects of any decision are seldom appreciated as significant until they have been chewed over for years by pundits, commentators and historians.

We do know certain things for sure about the strategy: it was designed by Brendon McCullum, the England coach, in cahoots with Ben Stokes, the captain. It was named by the editor of the Cricinfo website, Andrew Miller, the coinage coming from McCullum’s nickname, Baz. We also know that he and Stokes had important things in common: they were both attacking batsmen, both took aggressive strategies in the field, and both regarded a complete absence of negativity as essential to play. But it is also obvious that the attacking batting and bowling techniques that are now an inherent part of the England approach to Test cricket originated in one-day cricket, of which England’s leading cricketers are now playing a surfeit. Whether this approach is suited to Test cricket, or for all its excitement and consequent glamour might in fact be helping to kill it is a matter upon which we must reflect – especially after the events in Rajkot that led to England’s humiliation there last Sunday, and the heaviest defeat in a four-innings match in terms of runs since before the Second World War.

There are other factors in the development of Bazball that for the moment we can only surmise. One may be the conviction that even 50-over cricket is stretching the attention spans and patience of the average spectator, who can just about cope with T20, and that the traditional two-innings game urgently required some of the tactics of the white-ball slogfest is people were to continue watching it. One can understand why administrators might have been panicked into such a belief: too many test matches around the world are played to grounds that are half-empty on a good day, which suggests punters are voting with their feet and, as a result, with their wallets. Test series have been shortened (the five-Test contest between India and England is a rarity) and, as we have seen with South Africa’s effectively 2nd XI team this winter in New Zealand, are no longer regarded as the most important form of the game.

Therefore, it would be understandable if those who direct England’s fortunes thought that Bazball might be a short-cut to rescuing Test cricket from oblivion. I think those most directly involved – McCullum and Stokes – would deny it, preferring (and I am sure honestly) to see the style of play as the natural manifestations of their own personalities. It is hard, though, to imagine the halfwits of the England and Wales Cricket Board, who have done everything they possibly could in recent years to wreck the game short of putting a bomb under it, objecting to importing elements of the slogfest into test cricket. As they would doubtless see it, anything that brings the flavour of one-day cricket into drab old Test cricket must be welcome.

However, as we saw in Rajkot, not every situation in every game cries out for the application of the principals of Bazball: such as when facing 557 to win a Test match. This brings us to the old cliché about how non-cricket lovers, especially Americans, find it hard to believe that a match can last for five days, or more than 30 playing hours, and still end in a draw. As cricket lovers know, it goes beyond that: a game can last for five days, end in a draw, and still be absolutely riveting – and, unlike slogfest cricket, it can live in the memory for years afterwards.

The England management needs to learn this from Rajkot: that Bazball is sometimes not the answer, and that there needs sometimes to be a plan B, and quite possibly a plan C, if the England team is to perform at its best. Because the harsh reality is that even the most hardened cricket lover will find something better to do than spend a small fortune attending Test matches that are thrown away because of, frankly, a foolish refusal to be flexible or to think rationally. Sadly, such an attitude can only prevail in a context in which Test cricket is not deemed to matter very much, and certainly not so much as mindless white-ball cricket is deemed to matter.

Test cricket is not, or should not be, mindless. Of course cricket lovers want their side to win, but most of us are prepared to sit through five days and feel we have had a satisfactory experience even if it ends in that proverbial draw, or even if it ends in defeat, provided our side has put up a decent fight. But what happened in Rajkot was not putting up a fight: it was a form of incremental suicide. That is not to advocate the abandonment of Bazball altogether: on a perfect batting pitch, having won the toss, engaging in a full-frontal assault in order to intimidate and demoralise the opposition is a perfectly reasonable idea. However, if a side shows it won’t be intimidated or demoralised, the script may have to change. It should be obvious even on paper that some sides are going to be less easily pushed around than others – India would appear to be one of those. Why the debacle of the England second innings in Rajkot was allowed to happen suggests someone had stopped thinking: it was the worst sort of absence of true leadership.

So long as the ECB refuses to apply an intelligent approach to the future of Test cricket – which, as I have repeatedly written, requires promoting, prioritising and developing county cricket, and the creation of two codes in the game to allow players to concentrate on developing the skills needed in first-class cricket – there will be more disappointments. Less than a month ago, at the start of this series, we rejoiced at England coming from behind at Hyderbad and winning a thrilling Test match. But because of the inflexible worship of Bazball, the same side is now humiliated, and will have to fight intelligently if it is to save the series. We shall see: however, for many of us it is a sign not of a bold initiative being deployed to enhance cricket, but of the malign influence of highly disposable white-ball cricket on the highest form of a game none of us regards as disposable at all.

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