England 2 - 1 India - a strange 2025 cricketing summer

 

The 2025 men's Test English summer has all the makings of a surrealist dream: Familiar enough to be recognisable but with enough peculiarities to make it all seem uncomfortable. Zoom in far enough and the last ball of the Lord’s tests captures the whole summer, with a tailender playing a textbook middle-of-the-bat defence that falls at his feet, spins one way, then another, to trickle on to the stumps. Shots from the middle of the bat shouldn’t bowl someone, but they do in this series. Jasprit Bumrah is the best bowler in the world, but his personal series in 0-2. India have out-played England for most of the summer, but are still somehow losing. Yet the oddest part of this summer has been the evolution of BazBall, to something like traditional cricket.

English crowds have enjoyed three summers of BazBall and while there were murmurings the approach was maturing, BazBall can’t mature as it won't be BazBall anymore. 

The McCullum era's ethos is to be where your feet are, attack like hell, and to hell with the consequences if it all goes wrong. Any tweak to that is not BazBall, it’s just…strange, like a punk band going from three chords and anger to thoughtful instrumental concept albums about wizards, Bazball's maturing is a jarring assault to the system: it’s just too surreal. 

The honeymoon of 2022 will always be peak to England’s fun crusade, after Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes seemingly took the pressure off an exhausted team and care-free expressive cricket followed. 

But during BazBall's halycon days, importantly, England also won. 

It was probably inevitable that while England were not going to stay innocent expressives of 2022 once they started to lose. 2023’s away defeats to India & Pakistan hurt, as did final Test thrashing to New Zealand. Also, for all the talk of being where your feet are, there was also a lot chat about the next Ashes series and preparing in a professional way. With innocence lost, the joyful carefree philosophy of attacking play was balanced with the need to do whatever it takes to win, with the weight falling increasingly on the side of winning and a philosophy being too expensive. In many ways, the see-saw shift from amateur fun to industrial winning was inevitable, but it shifted quicker than most people expected.

Nothing epitomises the awkwardness of the mature BazBall 2.0 quite like the evolution of Zak Crawley. 

While a perennial controversial selection, Crawley was BazBall as his selection was questioned cricket's received wisdom but somehow it worked. Of course, he would get low scores and what opener doesn’t? But the pay-off is glorious: He’s not a Boycottian, see-the-shine-off-the-new-ball merchant, but an unguided beserker who can wreck havoc. Crawley 2.0 is more like the opposite of a beserker: an English opener who likes to get their eye-in. He still attacks, which is his downfall, but his best innings this year was a defensive supporting role in England’s chase at Headingley, scoring at a run every other ball. The rest of the time we get the low scores, which is fine, but without the threat of a monstrous assault around the corner, which is not fine. If you really want a cautious, traditional English opener, you would select Haseeb Hameed or Dom Sibley, and if you’re suggesting they’d fit neatly into this team, then BazBall has indeed entered new territory.

Stranger, and more worrying for England, is that they’ve been out-bowled for much of the series, when a fast medium workhorse with a Duke’s should be a nightmare for visiting batters. While not surprising that Jasprit Bumrah would be the best bowler so far, it’s India's change bowlers seemingly getting more swing than the honest England seamers. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Once upon a time, the sound of an English summer was a medium-pacer swinging it all over the place, with naysayers saying they won’t do on flat tracks overseas, but not this year.

Yet for all the awkwardness of BazBall 2.0, the proof is in the pudding which shows England are 2-1 up. The most BazBally parts being an unlikely 4^th innings run chase at Headingley, but even that lacked the explosiveness of his forbears and felt downright polite. The rest of the time England have looked sedate and traditional, apart from the fantastic Brook-Smith partnership at Edgbaston, but came in a losing cause.

So how did we get here with England winning the series so far, in face of logic? 

One thing has not changed: Ben Stokes is a captain marvel figure who can still inspire and doesn’t just run through brick walls headfirst, but runs through brick walls headfirst in a clever way. Jofra Archer’s return made everyone smile and his bowling of Rishabh Pant was pivotal moment in the Lord’s win. Also, England still have Joe Root. But the results have not really follow logic: maybe that’s the BazBall after all.