England make shock declaration on 393 as Joe Root hits century against Australia on Ashes Day One
IT was breathless, reckless and occasionally brainless but it was always utterly thrilling.
The day they unleashed Bazball on the Australians was a beautiful carnival of carnage.
On the eve of this Ashes series, England skipper Ben Stokes had repeated his comment that England are ‘not a results-driven team’ – and no one really batted an eyelid.
But nobody else in charge of a competitive professional sports team has ever actually said that before.
This is the oldest and most important series in cricket and yet Stokes spoke as if he was Evel Knievel or the boss of the Harlem Globetrotters.
And here was a six-and-a-half-hour display of England’s ethos – win if you can but above all else, entertain these 25,000 people who have spent vast sums of money and taken time off work to drink in the sunshine and take the p*** out of Australians.
This explosive style of play, masterminded by coach Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum and implemented by Stokes, is the most revolutionary approach to an Ashes contest since Douglas Jardine’s Bodyline 90 years ago.
But while that was about intimidation and violence, Bazball is about the pure joy of playing a great, but endangered, sport.
England are not actually in a commanding position in this First Test at Edgbaston.
They declared on 393-8, with Joe Root unbeaten on 118 and just building up a head of steam, so that Stuart Broad could have a late-afternoon dart at his bunny rabbit David Warner, who survived.
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But Bazball is not results-driven. It’s a white-knuckle ride of bravado, risk-taking and hitting a leather ball very hard and very often.
It has not just transformed the fortunes of England’s Test cricket team, it seems to have turned human nature on its head.
Suddenly, Test cricket is an extreme sport, the English are a bunch of Ned Kelly outlaws and the Aussies represent the stiff-upper-lipped establishment.
Most remarkably of all, Bazball has turned Yorkshiremen into swaggering show-offs.
The Tykes are supposed to be a dour, no-frills, tight-fisted bunch if you believe the stereotypes.
Not Joe Root, Harry Brook and Jonny Bairstow. Not under McCullum and Stokes.
Here was Root, reverse-ramping fast bowlers for six, reverse-sweeping Nathan Lyon for fours on his way to a brilliant 30th Test century, then crashing Lyon over his head for a couple of maximums before a declaration which would have been considered an act of lunacy until last year.
Root was never a plodder, just a brilliant, orthodox batsman and a harassed, limited captain.
But since passing the reins to Stokes, he has embraced his newfound freedom. While not quite scoring at the recommended Bazball speed limit of five runs an over, he has added some extraordinarily imaginative strokeplay.
It is like watching Steve Davis playing trick shots at the Crucible.
Briefly, there was Brook – the first batsman/stuntman to debut under Bazball, who had made the most impressive start to a Test career in the history of this game.
Brook played a ridiculously entertaining cameo and perished with a dismissal that would have earned him £250 from the producers of ‘You’ve Been Framed’.
And then there was Bairstow – the ultimate Bazballer, after scoring four rapid centuries last summer, then breaking his leg in two places while playing golf in an apparent attempt to inject McCullum’s daredevil ideology into a new sport.
The flame-haired wicketkeeper scored a brilliant run-a-ball 78, then was stumped while charging down the pitch at Lyon.
It was the sort of dismissal for which Kevin Pietersen would have been court-martialed and shot at dawn but these are more liberal times.
England were at it from the first ball, when Zak Crawley crashed a glorious extra-cover drive into the advertising hoardings off Aussie skipper Pat Cummins.
Australia are world champions but they appeared to be cowed by the very idea of Bazball.
Their quickest bowler, Mitchell Starc, was left out, Cummins employed four men on the boundary in the first half-hour, and while the tourists consistently enjoyed success, they were an old sepia photograph of how Test cricket used to look.
Ben Duckett, an opener who never leaves the ball – another revolutionary idea – was out cheaply and stupidly.
Ollie Pope was trapped by Lyon, the spindly Rumpelstiltskin off-spinner and pantomime villain who was roundly condemned as a ‘s**t’ Moeen Ali by a well-oiled, full-throated Hollies Stand.
Either side of lunch England slumped from 92-1 to 176-5 – Crawley gloving a snorter from Scott Boland, Brook bowled by Lyon in comic fashion and Stokes caught behind to a shocking shot.
But Bairstow and Root rallied with a century partnership, then Moeen clattered a couple into the boundary before he was stumped too – the ‘s**t Moeen Ali’ dismissing the real one.
Root completed his century, then started playing full-throttle Bazball just before Stokes called him in.
It had been a breezy romp. The first of two maidens arrived in the 37th over. Soon they will be changing the age-old format of a bowler’s analysis and scrap the maidens column altogether.
England’s great declaration gamble didn’t pay off as Australia’s openers survived four overs unscathed.
So on day one, Stokes had failed as a batsman and a skipper. And yet somehow, he and his team were brilliant.
They may not win this Test match and they may not reclaim the Ashes urn.
But it is going to be a lot of fun watching them try.