English cricket’s fondness for Brendon McCullum’s acumen as a Test coach has ended with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) sacking him on Sunday after four years in the job. ECB, however, has retained his services for the white-ball teams.Sunday’s development is a culmination of a tumultuous eight months which saw Ben Stokes hang up his boots in strained circumstances a fortnight ago, and one which saw England suffer humiliation in the Ashes in Australia and a 1-2 defeat to New Zealand at home last month. McCullum’s ouster, thus, officially brings the curtains down on ‘Bazball’ – a manic brand of ultra-aggressive Test cricket initiated by McCullum and Stokes in 2022.“Of course, I’m gutted not to be continuing, but I respect the decision. My focus now is on giving everything I’ve got to the White Ball teams and helping England keep moving forward,” McCullum said in a release issued by ECB. ECB CEO Richard Gould stated this is the right time to make a change as they target an Ashes victory at home next summer.English cricket’s fascination with McCullum can be traced back to 2015 when Eoin Morgan revived the team’s white-ball performances, capping it with the 2019 World Cup triumph, inspired by McCullum’s enterprising leadership that took New Zealand to the 2015 ODI World Cup final.Bazball dared the cricket community at large, but its greatest achievement probably was winning over the conservatives of English cricket with edge-of-the-seat action thrillers over the conventional form of Test cricket. Not only did it pull England’s Test cricket out of a hole under Joe Root’s leadership, it liberated Root the batter himself. Batting with an intent to score at nearly 4.5-5 runs per over and chasing down scores of over 350 in the last innings of a Test match, McCullum worked on a principle of blurring the lines between all three formats of the game.In its first year, outlandish wins over New Zealand and India at home followed by drubbing Pakistan on their nearconcrete pitches, disturbed the world order. From proud standard-bearers, the England team went to being bullish and then unbending about the brand of cricket they had begun to play. The players often referred to how they are the mercenaries of Test cricket. Resounding results, though, eluded them. In these four years, England failed to win against Australia and India besides falling out of contention for the World Test Championship title.The cracks in their game started to appear last year when an inexperienced Indian team under a new captain Shubman Gill repeatedly challenged their ‘we-will-chase-down-anything’ approach in a series that ended with a 2-2 scoreline.It was a brand of cricket that flirted with the boom-orburst model. It captivated the cricketing world when it came off, but consistency was always going to be rare. During India’s tour last year, Root and Stokes showed they were deviating from it with a more restrained approach as per match situation. Ashes was an implosion and now it is likely to be buried.‘Bazball’ declared to the world that there is another way to play Test cricket. If only it understood it wasn’t the only way.
