Random Musings #27: Bazball, Bazball, wherefore art thou Bazball?
Like most overhyped English products, Bazball is largely unoriginal but carries all the English characteristics that make it one of the most hated nations in the world.
Unless you live under a rock that hasn't been graced by Motabhai’s democratised mobile internet plan, you must have read or heard the term Bazball. One certainly has, and one only visits #CricketTwitter to check out Chokli vs Vada Pav fan wars.
For those in territories that haven’t benefited from Motabhai’s generosity, the term ostensibly refers to a revolutionary new style of playing Test cricket where one plays rash shots to get out and then compares it to revolutionary football tactics like Total Football: Johan Cryuff’s avante garde football philosophy that has allowed theocratic oil economies to make us forget their crimes through sport-washing.
Sadly, like most overhyped English products – with the exceptions of William Shakespeare, the Beatles, and Hugh Laurie - Bazball is largely unoriginal but carries all the English characteristics that have made the tiny nation one of the most hated countries in the world, just when we were about to forgive them for colonising the world so they could sell opium.
For starters, it was conceived by a New Zealander Brendan McCullum, who is nicknamed Baz. For those who have forgotten, McCullum lit up the very first match of the IPL with a mindboggling century. He took over as coach of the English cricket team in May 2022.
According to former cricketer and commentator Kerry O’Keefe Bazball was inspired by Philip Hughes’ departure for the Elysian Fields when he struck by a ball during a match between South Australia and New South Wales. At that time, Brendan McCullum was the captain of New Zealand. That tragic event was the inspiration for “playing freely without care, without consequence, because one would play every day like it was their last.”
Keefe said, sounding a lot like another famous man whose name started with K: “If you detach from consequence and you don't feel judged, you play freely. That's what this England side is doing at the moment and they're doing it so well. The seed was germinated through the passing of Phillip Hughes.”
While its origin story does sound like a lot of retrofitting – but then what story isn’t – what makes Bazball annoying is its quintessential Englishness wrapped in the Albion’s smug national character of faux superiority, the 'haww haww' Henry Higgins notion from My Fair Lady that believes that greatest thoughts are conceived in the English language, that daffodils are the world’s greatest flowers and chip butties the universe’s greatest snack.
There’s the boorish and vapid British press – when taking a break from blaming a Suits actor for breaking their royal family – that has written a gazillion articles on the superiority of the tactics crowned by a smug Piers Morgan smirking like he just hacked a dead girl’s phone.
There are numerous comments by its practitioners who somehow believe that they invented attacking batting as if Virender Sehwag, Viv Richards, and their ilk never existed. Even when the opponents win, its practitioners using the circular logic of Popes and Messiahs, claim they ought to get credit for their opponent’s victory.
One doesn’t really blame the British. It isn’t easy going from having the biggest Empire the world has ever known to not being able to afford electricity to make toast or being ruled by a guy who looks a lot like the chaps who used to serve you gin and tonic, so one has to create imaginary laurels to prop up one’s national character. But it feels so good when the Albion is shot down.
Thankfully, an Indian team shorn of some of its key players has treated Bazball the same way Karl Popper treated Plato, Marx, and Hegel, disemboweling their basic notions and showing the dangers of adhering to any centrally planned political system with no leeway for the actual facts or the vagaries of life. I could write a lot more, but frankly, the best review of Bazball was provided by an ad for Motabhai’s streaming service where two mannequins discuss Bazball.
The conversation went something like this:
Mannequin wearing the Indian jersey: Yeh Bazball kya hai?
Mannequin wearing the English jersey (in Captain Russell accent): Test mein T20 type batting.
Mannequin wearing the Indian jersey: Phir Test mein T20 type score bhi hoga.
Mannequin wearing the English jersey (in Captain Russell accent): Tereko dekh lunga…
To borrow from the lines of the great WH Auden (another Britisher who lived up to the hype):
I and the public know, what all schoolchildren learn.
When Brits hype up a thing, you know it will come undone.
Also read:
Nothing against you but bazball is essentially hype created by the players first and then picked up by the media, a good argument that I came across(by jarrod kimber) was, these outlandish comments made by players like chasing 600 etc were not made for the public but for the dressing room of both teams, just to give themselves a false belief that they could do it, and if it does come off once in 10 chances, it's a success.
One thing which is actually quantifiable and not just hype is England has been bowling better than any other team in 3rd innings (barring the ind series, but teams come to die here, nothing out of ordinary), they have figured out a way to pack things up quickly in 3rd innings(even on those flatties in pak) which needs to be studied and not forgotten amidst this bazball chaos.