Latest news with #BrendonMcCullum
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Risk-free batting, no reverse scooping of Bumrah and even the post-match beers were low key... this was grown-up Bazball, writes LAWRENCE BOOTH
About 9.30 on Tuesday evening, three hours after Jamie Smith's flick for six had secured a remarkable five-wicket win in the first Test against India, England's players finally left the Headingley dressing room. They were still buzzing after pulling off the 10th-highest chase in 149 years of Test cricket, but the mood was calm, the atmosphere understated, and the post-match debrief, led as ever by captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum, celebrated a team effort. The headlines had gone to Ben Duckett for his superlative 149, and to a lesser extent to Zak Crawley, whose careful 65 contributed to an opening stand of 188 that took a huge chunk out of England's pursuit of an imposing 371. But even those who contributed least on paper had played their part: Chris Woakes scored a crucial 38 in the first innings to drag England within six of India's 471, while Shoaib Bashir's removal of Rishabh Pant on the fourth afternoon paved the way for the tourists' second collapse of the game. Back at the Marriott Hotel in Leeds city centre, a 15-minute drive from the ground, most of the England players chilled at the bar, though a couple ventured out. As a dressing-room insider put it: 'It was controlled and composed — a bit like the match itself.' Even off the field, it felt like Bazball 2.0. There was no fraternising with the dispirited Indians: drinks with the opposition wait until the end of the series, and there are four matches still to come. England were determined not to raise a glass too early. One player told Mail Sport on Wednesday that the evening had been a 'few beers, then back to reality today'. Stokes, too, cut a relaxed figure after securing his 21st victory in 34 games in charge, taking his win percentage to 61.76, above WG Grace and Douglas Jardine, and into pole position among those to captain England in at least eight Tests. He had not been himself for much of the fourth day, when Pant and KL Rahul took their fourth-wicket partnership to an apparently match-winning 195. Stokes was curiously defensive, emptying the slip cordon and allowing Pant to get away with two thin edges off Josh Tongue. The England captain later denied he had lost any sleep over his decision to insert India under cloudless skies on the first morning. But he seemed so listless in the field on Monday that thoughts drifted to the autumn tour of Pakistan, where his unusual passivity let Saud Shakeel carve out a series-winning knock in Rawalpindi. Back then, other factors weighed heavily on Stokes's shoulders. Masked burglars had broken into his family home in Castle Eden, while his desperation to get back on the pitch after missing four Tests with hamstring trouble had, by his own admission, distracted him from the needs of the team. On the final morning in Leeds, though, Stokes was said to be back to his ebullient self, the undisputed figurehead of a team who know that their legacy will be determined by 10 Tests against India and Australia, but refuse to be burdened by the prospect. 'It's a good job Test cricket is played over five days,' said Stokes later, in response to a question about the toss. He wasn't gloating — just stating a fact. This is a team who feel increasingly comfortable in their own skin. As the post-match interviews took place on the outfield, Duckett spotted his 11-month-old daughter, Margot, and spoke like a doting dad rather than a Test star who had just made the sixth-highest fourth-innings score in English history. 'I want to give her a cuddle,' said the opener. 'I've definitely realised there's more to life.' Duckett said he was taking the ego out of things and playing more sensibly Gone are the days when he was throwing a retaliatory pint over Jimmy Anderson, or throwing up on a plane over the head coach Trevor Bayliss. And Duckett's growing maturity has matched the team's evolution: even while scoring at 4.55 an over in the chase, England were not frenetic, as they have been previously. It was high-class and risk-free — a template, perhaps, for a new era. Back in March, Duckett told Mail Sport that Jasprit Bumrah, while a magnificent bowler, would offer no surprises after he had faced him during the five-match series in India in early 2024. His quotes were misinterpreted by others, and the ensuing pile-on forced him to close his X account. But Headingley backed up his assessment. 'I'm learning it a bit quicker,' he said. 'It's potentially a bit of maturity kicking in, realising that whenever he came on it was going to be a short, sharp burst. Trying to see him off, and not necessarily playing any big shots, and knowing it would get easier. It's taking the ego out of things.' Crawley, meanwhile, revealed that he and his opening partner had coped with the size of their task by playing a simple mind game: 'Me and Ducky said, 'It's day one today'. Looking at the total can make you play a little bit negatively at times, but it comes down quite quickly.' Previous iterations of the Bazball team might have attacked Bumrah, but Crawley saw off the seamer so assiduously that his 111-ball half-century was the slowest of his Test career. 'We knew it was a fast-scoring ground,' he said. 'We knew we could always catch up, so we started off quite slowly and wanted to see what the pitch was doing. Our mindset in that changing room is very calm.' The Bazball era got going three years ago in the second Test against New Zealand at Trent Bridge with a flurry of sixes by Jonny Bairstow — seven of them in a 92-ball 136, to go with four by Stokes himself. But until Smith launched Ravindra Jadeja twice over the ropes in what proved the final over of this Test, England's Headingley chase included only one six — a miraculous reverse sweep by Duckett off Jadeja. Some of the criticism that has come England's way, especially during the first two Tests against Australia in 2023, and the 4–1 defeat by India a few months later, was over the top, branding them unfairly as merry sloggers, oblivious to reality and impervious to criticism. But Stokes had hinted at a tweaked approach before this game, saying his team had to 'adapt better when we're up against the wall' and had let themselves down at times 'when we have been behind the game'. And he was true to his word. On the second morning, India were 430 for three. They were 333 for four on the fourth afternoon. For Shubman Gill's men, this ought to have been an unlosable Test. For England, their recovery — twice over — offered hope of something more refined, more resilient, and possibly even more potent.
Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Ben Stokes and his team save us from banality of TikTok and YouTube
It's said that Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum are saving Test cricket. I disagree. These two heroes are saving civilisation. They're saving it from short-form cricket, short-form sport, short attention spans, instant gratification, TikTok, YouTube shorts, dopamine-optimised trivia, fast food that fills you up in ten seconds but leaves you unsatisfied, overly salinated and feeling slightly ill. I'm regularly told that sport extending over five hours, let alone five days — and where you might not even get a winner — is out of kilter with the spirit of our times. People don't want sport where the two teams stop for lunch and little happens for minutes at a time. But periods of boredom are the point of Test cricket, along with the patience required to stick with it, to soak it up and to realise that — not unlike reading Tolstoy or listening to Wagner — that those lulls conspire to create a climax unreachable in shorter, more superficial forms of sport or, for that matter, culture. What a contest this was (with Headingley, once again, the crucible for England's heroics) from the brave decision to put India into bat, to that moment on day two when India were 430 for three and Stokes was (according to some) looking decidedly foolish, to the missed catches, Ben Duckett's reverse-sweeping, Jasprit Bumrah at times looking unplayable, Ollie Pope's century, Zak Crawley's determination, and Rishabh Pant's two hundreds. Across all of this, the complexion of the match shifted imperceptibly from hour to hour, before, on that final day, England dared to believe not that they could win but that they absolutely would. I wish I could bottle the psychology of this England side and transfer it into hearts and minds up and down the nation. It's not so much self-belief as sheer derring-do. They are not arrogant. They are not conceited. I doubt they'd describe themselves as God's gift to cricket or anything else. It's more that they see Test cricket as an adventure, a thing to explore with heart and courage, to perhaps risk failure but give it everything along the way. Against India in Rajkot last year, Duckett was asked what kind of target England could realistically chase down and he replied: 'The more the better.' Wonderful. We're in the middle of a political debate about the rising cost of welfare, about the thousands of new people every week joining the ranks of those claiming benefits. How I wish for a sea change in attitudes whereby people stop talking about all the things they can't do, daren't do, are unable to do, and instead ponder the things they can. Left-wingers will doubtless say it's glib, perhaps even insulting, to ask people to take a leaf out the book of Stokes, McCullum, et al. I disagree. Sure, life is about luck, opportunity and the rest but it's also a state of mind (or, as Talk Talk put it in their finest song, Life's What You Make It). How thrilling to see England's body language on the second day, when doubters were writing them off, still believing they could win. As Stokes put it, thrillingly: 'Every session, we turned up with the attitude that we could blow this match apart.' Put this on billboards across every school in the nation. This is why I love this form of the sport. I love the tempo, the brilliant writing in the papers, the wonderful vicariousness of going home from work on the Tube and then catching up with the score when you regain a signal. I also hugely miss the days when I'd watch with my late father on the telly in the morning and then jump in the car for a day out for a picnic in Dinton Pastures and he'd bring along the radio so we could keep track of Test Match Special. 'What's the score?', a passer-by would ask. 'Boycott's just gone,' we'd reply or 'Gower's on fifty'. These weren't just conversations; they were the gossamer threads connecting strangers to that abstraction we call society. Don't get me wrong. I should perhaps say that I like the short-form stuff too. I get a Maccy D's from time to time (breakfast muffin with a hash brown). I scroll through TikTok every now and again. T20 can be gripping (one thinks of the 2016 World Cup final between England and West Indies — we may not have won, but the contest was unforgettable). Conan Doyle's short stories are a treat to read and In My Life by The Beatles is only two minutes, 27 seconds long but packs in more beauty and truth than a hundred longer, more cloying pieces of music. I'd never fetishise length or duration for its own sake. But what should worry us is when intricate, complex institutions like Test cricket start to disappear altogether, or when they become like besieged islands in a sea of ephemera. 'O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience,' wrote Shakespeare in act three, scene four of Hamlet. They are words that will resonate with anyone who stuck with this magnificent contest across five enthralling days. Roll on Edgbaston.
Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Times
Don't pick Jofra Archer for second Test, Paul Farbrace tells England
England have been advised not to pick Jofra Archer for the second Test against India by the fast bowler's head coach at Sussex after his long-awaited return to red-ball cricket. Archer, 30, is in contention to be named in the England squad for the Edgbaston Test, which begins next Wednesday, after bowling 18 overs in the County Championship against Durham, having not played a first-class game in four years. He took his first red-ball wicket in 1,501 days and could soon make his first Test appearance since February 2021 but Paul Farbrace, the Sussex head coach and formerly England's assistant coach, believes Archer is not ready for that arena just yet. 'The conversation we've had was that he would come and play in this game and then he'd be assessed at the end of this game,' Farbrace said. 'It's up to Rob [Key, England's managing director] and Luke [Wright, the national selector] and Ben [Stokes, the captain] and Brendon McCullum [the coach] to decide whether they want to pick him to play at Edgbaston on Wednesday. When I'm asked — and I haven't been yet — all I'll report back is that he looks in great rhythm, he bowled very nicely, he's bowled 18 overs so far in the game, it's their decision whether they pick him or not. 'If I was in their situation my honest answer would be that I wouldn't pick Jofra for the next Test match. I would save him for the third Test match [at Lord's]. 'I'd pick the same team for the next game and bring Jofra back into the third game of the series. That's how I would manage him but I'm no longer involved in that. If they choose to ask my opinion, that would be my view.' Archer has been laid low by a succession of injuries, including serious elbow and back issues, since his last Test appearance, in Ahmedabad against India in February 2021. However, after making a successful white-ball return for England, he wants to restart his Test career this summer before the Ashes winter. Archer's wicket against Durham was his first red-ball wicket in 1,501 days MI NEWS/SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL England are just as keen to involve him again, with Wright admitting this month that the England management had earmarked the second Test for his return. Archer looked good on a slow Riverside pitch, finishing with figures of one for 32 as Sussex drew with Durham. But Farbrace believes that England's five-wicket win at Headingley to lead the five-match series means there is no need to rush his return. 'They've just won the last Test match and there's no reason why they shouldn't stick with the same team for Edgbaston,' he said. 'I would be definitely sticking with Chris Woakes for Edgbaston because he knows the pitch inside out. Why change the team? They've just the Test match at Headingley. They've set themselves up nicely for the series. 'The whole point of this was that he got some red-ball overs, he bowled with good pace, he bowled with good accuracy, his body's in good shape which is fantastic and we'd all love to see Jofra playing for England because England having Jofra available makes England a much better team and gives us a much better chance of winning the big series. So let's look after him and be careful with him but it is fantastic to have him back.' If England do not select him for Edgbaston, Archer may instead be made available for Sussex's Division One fixture against Warwickshire, which starts at Hove on Sunday.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
England ease off Bazball big talk but continue to embrace thrill of the chase
Sports writers love a Churchillian speech that precedes a mind-bending feat. Take three years ago, when word got back that Brendon McCullum had told his England players to 'run towards the danger' at Trent Bridge before Jonny Bairstow vaporised a target of 299 against New Zealand. It was like ruddy catnip for the press corps. And this time, after reeling in 371 at Headingley at a breezy 4.5 runs per over and with 14 overs to spare? Apparently very little was said in the dressing room beforehand beyond 'bat the day, win the game' or Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett deciding between them to ignore the target and just 'play like it was day one'. Not nearly so sexy, admittedly, but perhaps in its own way just as instructive. It may just be that after three years of McCullum and Ben Stokes unstitching some old-world English thinking about chasing – pressure, historical precedence, securing the draw before turning thoughts to the win – we are now witnessing the upshot: a team with such clarity in these situations that sabres no longer need to be rattled. 'My mindset personally was a bit different to what it has been over the last couple of years,' admitted Duckett, his match-winning 149 from 170 balls having begun with caution against the obvious threat of Jasprit Bumrah. 'It was potentially a bit of maturity from me kicking in, trying to see [Bumrah] off, not necessarily playing any big shots, and knowing it would get easier. 'And massive credit to Zak [who made 65 in an opening stand of 188]. The way he played, I took my hat off to him. He is definitely thinking about batting differently now. He's still smacking the bad ball away but his thought process is so calm.' It does feel like the project as a whole has gone this way a touch of late; that the big talk has not only receded in public – as per Rob Key's directive – but also eased off behind closed doors. There were still moments when aggression tipped into self-harm, like Jamie Smith holing out on day three with the second new ball moments away. But at the back end of the chase, 69 to win, Smith fed off Joe Root's typically low heart-rate at the other end and played a gem for his 44 not out. This is where the naysayers will interject, of course, pointing to the rash of catches India grassed across the match, a pitch that stayed largely true to the end, plus another season of Dukes balls that seem to need changing more often than a newborn's nappy. Just like the one-day team under Eoin Morgan that stuck an extra run on established scoring rates between 2015 and 2019, England being the team to shift the dial tends to invite a fair degree of scepticism and caveats. The drops? Well, England put down a couple of costly ones themselves. Pitches that suit Bazball? At Headingley such surfaces predate the Stokes-McCullum axis when you remember Shai Hope's magnum opus in 2017. Even with a few sliding doors moments, not uncommon over five days, this victory was still pretty remarkable. And not just the run chase either, but for England surviving two slogs in the field as India chalked up five centuries. Not long ago, shoulders would have slumped here. Alastair Cook admitted as much afterwards, telling Test Match Special that had he won the toss and seen the opposition reach 430 for three – India's position mid-morning day two – players would have been questioning his judgment internally. But not so this current bunch under Stokes, who, to pinch a line from his own Headingley heist in 2019, seem to 'never, ever give up'. Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion Granted, there have been some messy implosions along the way, the likes of Lord's during the 2023 Ashes or Rajkot last year. But the 835 runs that India scored across the two innings in Leeds was the fourth highest total conceded by a team that has gone on to win. Under Stokes and McCullum, England are also second and third on this list after the 847 runs shipped in Rawalpindi in late 2022 and 837 during that 'run towards the danger' Test in Nottingham six months earlier. After an England win there is usually still a talking point or two as regards selection for the next Test and with Jofra Archer on the comeback trail at Chester-le-Street these past four days there may well be again. But go down from one to 11 and every incumbent contributed to this 1-0 lead. Even Shoaib Bashir did the thing folks thought beyond his current stage of development, the rookie holding an end in the first innings when the seamers struggled to locate the right length. Chris Woakes, you say? He has clearly had better games with the ball and, aged 36 with the body possibly starting to creak, it is taking him longer to get up and running. But then consider his 38 in England's first innings, repelling the second new ball and one half of three partnerships worth a combined 111 runs. It may not have been headline-grabbing stuff but it was still utterly central to the cause. And not least considering India's Nos 8-11 managed just nine runs between them in the match. It is here where the tables have been turned since England's 4-1 defeat in India last year, a tour that had the locals scratching their heads as to why the visitors kept compromising their ability to take 20 wickets by insuring themselves against a lengthy tail. As counterintuitive as it sounds after Josh Tongue razed their lower order twice, India would be better served playing their best four wicket-taking bowlers plus Ravindra Jadeja – and making sure the catches start to stick.
Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Times
Ben Duckett: from impetuous talent to world-class opener
Ben Duckett's man-of-the-match performance in England's record-breaking victory at Headingley marked another significant step in his evolution into one of the best opening batsmen in the world. Duckett's rise has not been without detours. Initially thrust into Test cricket in 2016 and quickly dropped, his early career was marked by promise and exuberance without permanence or consistency. But since returning to the side under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, he has become emblematic of the new England, initially doing exactly what they wanted — being aggressive and entertaining —but now, as Bazball moves into its next 'smarter' stage, evolving with it. The 30-year-old left-hander remains aggressive, but the impetuosity has been replaced by a more refined sense of opportunity. The result is Duckett's emergence as one of the most consistent and adaptable openers in world cricket — across all formats. Since returning to the Test side for England's 2022 tour to Pakistan, Duckett's average is 47.37 at a strike rate of about 88. He has been defined as a player who doesn't believe in leaving the ball, but the fact that he was smart enough to not play at some of Jasprit Bumrah's deliveries in both innings at Headingley is strong evidence of development. 'My mindset was a bit different to what it has been over the last couple of years,' Duckett said after his match-winning 149 at Headingley. 'I was trying to focus on key moments. There is a potentially a bit of maturity from me kicking in. 'That was my first hundred in the last [fourth] innings [of a Test match] and I'm delighted. It's one thing I've not done loads of — even in county cricket. I think I'm learning a bit quicker. Bumrah got me out in the first Test in India last year: reverse-swing, big drive, bowled. 'I am taking the ego out of things, knowing that I don't need to go for the big drive. It's not turning negative, because I will still try to put the bad balls away.' Duckett recognised that Bumrah, for all his brilliance, can only bowl in short spells and the smart move was to sensibly keep him at bay before targeting the other seamers. His century, and 62 in the first innings, were the performances of a player who now understands how to pace an innings, judge a situation, and exert pressure without recklessness. 'It's pretty obvious but Bumrah is a big threat,' Duckett said. 'It was about realising that whenever he came on it was going to be a short, sharp burst and it's about seeing him off.' The Headingley Test offered a near-complete encapsulation of Duckett's growth. In the first innings, he was measured and patient; in the second, he was commanding — his 149 came in only 170 balls, but it felt less like a blitz and more like a clinical dismantling. He waited for the bowlers to err, and when they did, he punished with fluency and control. His reverse-sweeping against the spin of Ravindra Jadeja was a masterclass, scoring 31 runs with 12 reverse-sweeps despite the Indian spinner turning it wildly out of the rough. It was so impressive that his captain, who had been struggling to connect with his own reverse-sweeps, asked for Duckett's advice on the final afternoon. 'I actually spoke to him when we came off for that rain break,' Stokes said. 'He's one of the best in the world at reverse-sweeps, sweeps. He is a fantastic player of spin, particularly on tricky surfaces, so I had little word with him about what he thought I could look at doing a bit better to give myself a better chance against Jadeja.' Duckett's performances at Headingley have resulted in him leaping up five spots in the ICC Test batting rankings to eighth, while he has also quietly solved one of England's long-standing problems: the search for a stable, Test opening pair alongside Zak Crawley. At Headingley, their 188-run second-innings stand was vital in setting up the run chase of a daunting 371. The pair complement each other very well: tall/short, left-hand/right-hand which poses all sorts of issues to bowlers with their line and lengths. Crawley had the best view in the house for most of Duckett's innings on the final day and hailed it as an 'unbelievable knock'. 'People might not realise how good that knock was with the rough there for Jadeja and doing a bit with the new ball, up and down,' Crawley said. 'It was incredible, so I was just trying to get him on strike. We knew it was a fast-scoring ground, we knew we could always catch up, so we started off quite slowly and just wanted to see what the pitch was doing. 'We tried to be quite watchful and accelerate after, although Ducky did more of the accelerating than me.' Perhaps most striking is Duckett's mental shift. Once burdened by the scrutiny of the Test arena, he now plays with an uncluttered mind encouraged by his captain and coach to keep it simple. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. He may have been seen as something of a bold selection in 2022 but now Duckett is no longer a peripheral but unrealised talent. He is undeniably becoming England's most reliable opener — and one of the few in world cricket excelling across formats. His game is still rooted in instinct, but now it is layered with intelligence and an added maturity that he admits has come with age, experience and parenthood. 'It comes from playing more Test matches and learning from mistakes,' he said, 'but also I am a dad now and I've definitely realised there is more to life.'
