Imperfect Bazball Retracts Teeth

India play the patience game

Bazball has bared its teeth in some memorable and record-breaking Test matches over the last three years with records and conventions about the way Test cricket should be approached and can be played challenged at every stage. The question throughout was whether there was a caveat.

On the first day of the Lord’s Test, with the series level at 1-1, the ‘new way’ retracted its teeth and accepted that it wasn’t always possible, or even desirable. Joe Root reached 99* from 191 balls by collecting singles, grinding through the hard work demanded by yet another slow, ‘administrators pitch’ prepared for ticket and drinks sales rather than exciting cricket.

India arrived in England not just prepared to play the waiting game but looking forward to it. They backed their tortoise against the home team’s hare and levelled the series with a pragmatic approach in the second Test at Edgbaston following the first at Headingley which they would also have won without six/seven dropped catches and profligate lower-order batting.

But as adaptable as the Stokes/McCullum era may have become, perhaps reluctantly, there are some areas of intransigence which appear unlikely to ever change. In most successful teams there may be one or two positions in the XI open to a change which might strengthen the team. There are three in England’s, but loyalty is a stronger bond than common sense or plain evidence.

Zak Crawley is a liability. Averages can be misleading and his, after 50+ Tests, is embarrassing, but so is his return on match-changing or match-winning innings. One in 25, or so. 36-year-old Chris Woakes, apparently, played at Lord’s because he has taken 32 wickets there at less than 13 apiece and scored a century. How old was he when he achieved those feats? In His 20s. And against whom did he take his best haul? Ireland.

The investment in Shoaib Bashir is most fascinating, however. Plain statistics can make fools and liars of us all, so never mind that four of his five wickets in this series have been caught in the deep at an eye-watering cost. He is required to bowl a huge amount of overs on flat pitches, without a ‘mystery ball’, offers nothing with the bat and is a below-average fielder. An un prodigious off-spinner batting at number 11. Gosh.

Are England persevering with Woakes because of his record, his undeniably important personality and his batting ability? Or because there’s nobody better? Crawley’s case is even more bewildering and Bashir’s the most withering. England may be in ‘gambler’s corner’. Having bet so much on assembling a team to win the coveted Ashes, they are now chasing their debts. What makes it even more perplexing is that Woakes’ wicket on previous Ashes tours have cost well over 50 runs each. So is he even in the plans for the end of the year?

India, meanwhile, are gliding. Pre-series worries assuaged by captain Shubman Gill’s gargantuan gathering of runs in the first two Tests and encouraged by their hosts’ swagger (“We’ll chase anything” – Harry Brook at Headingley needing 600) they are now in the comfortable position of a chess grand master, confident that their counter moves will be sufficient without having to worry about making the play.

The photographs, by the way, are of the recently created ‘Time Wall’ – or ‘Father Time Wall’ – which celebrates the 100 greatest moments at the Home of Cricket since it began. To date. It will be constantly updated. A lovely touch and an opportunity to lose yourself in history during breaks in play or even quiet periods, of which there were several on Thursday. And may be several more over the next few days. Administrators pitches, and all that.