Bazball at Three: What England Have Gained, What They've Lost

May 2022. England's Test team was in ruins. One win from 17 matches. Joe Root had stepped down from the captaincy, exhausted. Andrew Strauss made a decision that raised more than a few eyebrows: Brendon McCullum as head coach. New captain? Ben Stokes. And together, these two men promised a brand of cricket England had never played before.

Three years on from that moment, the experiment has a body of evidence behind it. Bazball — a name coined by an ESPN Cricinfo journalist from McCullum's nickname "Baz" — is no longer just a batting approach or a tactical philosophy. It has become an identity, a brand, and in some quarters, a religion. Collins Dictionary shortlisted it as a Word of the Year nominee in 2023. But when you look at the numbers honestly, when you weigh the results across three full years, a more complicated picture emerges. One with genuine highs, real lows, and questions that still don't have clean answers.

The Beginning: Those Glorious Early Days

The first few months were, genuinely, something to behold. In the summer of 2022, England chased down targets of 277, 299, and 296 in consecutive fourth innings against New Zealand — the first team in Test history to chase three scores of 250-plus in back-to-back matches. Then came the 378 chase against India, Bairstow and Root finishing it off in a partnership that left commentators short of superlatives.

Pakistan were white-washed at home. And in Rawalpindi, England scored 657 runs at 6.5 runs per over — the highest run rate ever recorded in a completed Test innings, breaking a record that had stood since 1902. In the very first year, Bazball had already rewritten history books.

The numbers transformed overnight. England's batting strike rate jumped from 48.1 to 70.7 per over. Centuries doubled. Home Test win percentage climbed to around 75%. This wasn't just good cricket — it was cricket that made people want to watch Test matches again, which in a world drowning in T20 leagues, is no small thing.

Harry Brook announced himself with 809 runs in his first nine Test innings, a record opening to a Test career. Joe Root, freed from the captaincy, rediscovered himself entirely — averaging 57 with nearly 70 as his strike rate across the first three years of the Bazball era, racking up century after century in a way that reminded you he was always meant to be just a batter, not a leader carrying the weight of a broken team. The Root who once got called "too patient" was now playing reverse ramps and the crowd was going wild. And as we discussed when covering his 14,000-run milestone at The Oval earlier this month, Root's Bazball renaissance has been one of the most remarkable second chapters any Test batter has produced. (Read our full coverage of that match and Root's incredible knock here.)

What the Numbers Actually Say

But not all numbers tell a happy story. And this is where Bazball's honest ledger gets complicated.

Against the other six WTC teams — New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh — England have been dominant. Win rates are strong, the cricket has been spectacular, and the results have largely justified the approach. But against India and Australia, the picture is almost entirely different.

England haven't beaten India in a series since 2018 — a drought that began before McCullum arrived and has continued under him. They were beaten 4-1 in India in 2024. Australia? England haven't won an Ashes series since 2015. The 2023 home Ashes ended in a 2-2 draw, which Australia needed only to retain the urn. Then came 2025 in Australia — a brutal 3-0 series loss in just 11 days of actual play. McCullum acknowledged it plainly after Adelaide: "We came here with high hopes, high ambitions and lofty goals. And we've been outplayed across three Test matches."

According to ESPN Cricinfo's analysis, across the 16 Tests England have played against India and Australia since June 2022, they failed to take 20 wickets in six of them. The balls-per-wicket average against those two sides is nearly 15 deliveries higher than against the other six WTC teams. And since the start of the previous WTC cycle, England's bowlers take the most balls per wicket of any team in the competition. Batting fearlessly is spectacular when it works — but if the bowling can't follow up with 20 wickets, it becomes irrelevant.

The WTC standings tell their own story: England finished 4th in 2021-23, dropped to 5th in 2023-25, and currently sit 7th. The ultimate measuring stick of Test cricket quality has not moved in Bazball's favour.

What Bazball Got Genuinely Right

It would be dishonest to write this piece without acknowledging what Bazball has genuinely changed for the better — because some of those changes are real and lasting.

Test cricket became watchable again. In a sporting landscape where every format competes for attention and every league promises spectacle, England built a Test team that people genuinely wanted to follow. Grounds filled up. Day one tickets sold out. That matters, even if it doesn't show up in WTC points.

Young players got opportunities they wouldn't have seen for years under the old regime. Rehan Ahmed debuted as a teenager. Jacob Bethell came in and performed immediately. Sonny Baker got his chance in the most difficult of circumstances — three debutants at The Oval against New Zealand — and showed enough with the ball to suggest there's something there. Bazball's selection philosophy — if you're good enough, you're old enough — has genuinely changed how England develops talent. It's the same energy that surrounds Vaibhav Sooryavanshi right now on the other side of the world: back yourself, give the kid a chance, see what happens. (We explored that theme in depth when Dale Steyn made his extraordinary prediction about Sooryavanshi — worth a read.)

And the entertainment value has been undeniable. Twenty-four Test wins in three years. Chases that defied logic. Innings that broke records. Whatever you think about the results at the top level, Bazball produced moments that Test cricket will talk about for decades.

Ben Stokes: The Heart of It All — and Its Biggest Structural Flaw

You cannot review Bazball without being honest about its central dependency. Ben Stokes is not just the captain — he is the philosophy made flesh. When he is on the field, England are a different team. When he is absent, the cracks show immediately.

The Oval in 2026 proved this as clearly as anything has. Stokes and Gus Atkinson were both absent following an off-field incident — a nightclub curfew breach — and England were forced to field three debutants. The result was a 253-run defeat to New Zealand, Matt Henry taking 11 wickets in a performance that exposed exactly how thin England's experience runs the moment their key players are missing. (We covered that match in full here — including Henry's historic haul.)

The broader question this raises is one that Bazball has never satisfactorily answered: what happens when Stokes isn't there? Three years in, England still don't have a clear answer to that. Joe Root is a world-class batter but a reluctant leader, as his own public comments during this series have made clear. The system has been so built around one man's force of personality that it has never been properly stress-tested without him — and every time it has been tested, even briefly, the gaps have been obvious.

Stokes is set to return for the Trent Bridge decider, with the series now level at 1-1. If England win there, this episode will be remembered as a bump in the road. If they don't, the questions will be louder than ever. (Everything you need to know about Stokes' return is here.)

What Bazball Has Cost

There is a critique of Bazball that rarely gets said out loud, but deserves to. The philosophy has not been equally kind to every player it has touched.

Ollie Pope is the clearest example. In 2020, batting at five or six, Pope averaged 43.73 at a strike rate of 57 — technically sound, composed, a genuine talent developing naturally. Bazball moved him to number three, a position that demands a different skillset and a different temperament. His average has since dropped to 36.74. The aggressive approach that unlocked Root and Brook didn't suit Pope at all — and instead of recognising that and adapting, the system kept pushing him into a role that didn't fit until the situation became untenable.

This points to a broader limitation: Bazball's ideology can struggle to accommodate a player who thrives on patience and accumulation. A batter who builds a 150-ball 70 and saves a Test match may be exactly what England need — but there is no obvious space for that player in this setup. When the philosophy becomes rigid enough to override individual strengths, it stops being a philosophy and starts being a straitjacket.

The Online Noise Around Bazball

Bazball has also become one of cricket's most polarising online topics — and the reactions it generates say something interesting about how modern cricket fandom works. When England win under Stokes and McCullum, the duo are hailed as visionaries. When they lose, the same voices declare the whole thing a fraud. The pendulum swings with remarkable speed and very little nuance in between.

This pattern is not unique to England. We have seen it play out across cricket — the way online sentiment around any team or player can be manufactured, amplified, or distorted to a point where it bears almost no resemblance to measured assessment. Bazball, precisely because it is so loud and so visible, attracts the most extreme versions of both celebration and criticism. (We explored the darker side of online cricket culture in this piece — it is relevant reading for anyone who has watched the discourse around Bazball online.)

The truth, as usual, lives somewhere in the middle. Bazball is neither the revolution its most passionate defenders claim, nor the embarrassing experiment its harshest critics insist. It is a genuine attempt to do something different, with real successes and real failures attached to it.

Three Years Later: The Honest Verdict

Bazball gave England something they had almost completely lost by 2022: relevance. A team that had one win from 17 Tests became a team that could chase anything, beat anyone on their day, and fill a stadium on the strength of their intent alone. That transformation is real and it should not be minimised.

But Bazball has not yet delivered the thing that ultimately defines a great Test team: the ability to beat the best, consistently, in all conditions. India away. Australia away. The Ashes. These are the benchmarks that matter most, and on those benchmarks, the gap has not closed. WTC rankings have gone backwards. The bowling attack, for all its improvement against lesser opposition, has not found answers against the top two sides in the world.

Three years. Plenty of celebrations. A few serious stains. An extraordinary number of memorable cricket matches. And a team that still hasn't quite answered the question of whether it is merely exciting — or truly great. That difference, for now, only results can settle.

Trent Bridge is next. Stokes is coming back. And perhaps in that match, or in an Ashes series not too far away, Bazball will finally get the answer it has been searching for.

Do you think Bazball has been a genuine revolution or an entertaining experiment that hasn't delivered when it matters most? And does England have the bowling attack to challenge India and Australia consistently? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.