How England's sledging practice turned India series on its head

Independent

4 days ago

No more Mr Nice Guys. When Brendon McCullum spoke, he had a message with a difference. England may have irritated some of their opponents with their words off the pitch, with the sense they were trying to save Test cricket in a flurry of sixes or wanted to chase 600 for the hell of it, but rarely on the field. Until last week.
Victory over India at Lord's came in a game with a difference. One indication that it wasn't Bazball as normal came when England chugged along at three runs an over, Ben Stokes grinding out runs on a slow pitch. It was about battling, not battering bowlers into submission.
But another came as they sought to prise out the 10 Indian wickets. England were verbal and vocal, combative and confrontational. There was a shift in strategy. McCullum, who can be a laidback emblem of Kiwi cool, had instigated it. Brook, a carefree antidote to some of the hard-nosed Yorkshiremen of cricketing past and cliche, bought into it.
'Baz said it to us a few days before,' the ODI captain revealed. 'He said sometimes we are a bit too nice.' It was a message Brook underlined on the third evening at Lord's. Shubman Gill had been particularly forthright in his comments to Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett when the openers occupied enough time to ensure a single over was bowled.
'I actually brought it up in the team chat after,' Brook said. 'I think we just felt the opportunity last week was the perfect time to be 11 players against them two like they were the night before. We had a little conversation and everybody saw them get stuck into Creeps and Ducky, and we just thought: 'I am not standing for that'. So we all piled into them.'
When there was a role reversal, when India batted, Brook was an audible presence near the bat. 'I suppose I was in the ring for the majority of it, being at slip,' he said. There have been times in recent years when England's aggression has come with the bat, when it has rained boundaries. But if part of the transformation of Indian cricket has been an assertiveness, a refusal to back down, England looked to show their toughness.
'That was the perfect opportunity to go out there and give them something back, and not be the nice guys that we have been in the last three or four years, and put them under pressure,' Brook said. 'It might have made a difference to them getting out or we might have just been very skilful and bowled well.'
That can be the great unknowable; whether a 22-run victory was chiselled out by excellence or intimidation. Mental disintegration, to borrow Steve Waugh's phrase, can conjure images of snarling Australians, though the scorebook never records who was talked out of their wicket. But perhaps some sledging practice could prove timely, given England's winter trip to Australia.
It doesn't necessarily make it the blueprint, or mean they will spend five days at Old Trafford quoting liberally from Merv Hughes at his most insulting. Brook felt England did not cross the line. 'I don't think it's against the spirit of cricket,' he said. 'We weren't being personal, we weren't being nasty, we were just putting them under more pressure. We weren't going out there effing and jeffing at them and being nasty people. We were just going about it in the right manner. It is not that we are going to be a horrible team going forward.'
But if the competitive juices were flowing, that enhanced the drama. In any case, Brydon Carse, according to his friend Brook, is invariably heated. 'You want people like that in your team,' Brook said. Then there is Jofra Archer, whose natural demeanour is less intense than Carse's.
Yet, Brook noted, 'I think he always bowls a little bit quicker when he is angry. One of the players told him to take his arm sleeve off at some point. The next ball was 94mph. We have probably got a bit of a job this week to try and get him angry at some point, and try and blow them away.'
That was said with a smile, but there is a point. England can talk a good game, but genuine speed has an eloquence of its own. 'When you have got two guys who are bowling 90mph, it is a brutal place to be playing,' Brook added.
The Stokes-McCullum era has been built on attacking batting and positive rhetoric more than express pace, which they have only had at times, and wars of words. They sought to start off by getting in their own players' heads. Which is an ongoing process, as McCullum has former All Blacks mental-skills coach Gilbert Enoka working with them at Old Trafford. But if the cliche is that nice guys finish last, the newer, harsher England are a victory away from a series win.