Geoffrey Boycott has been very critical of England’s famous “Bazball” style. He thinks that if the hosts’ main goal is to please the crowd and not win games, they might as well be a circus.
England has had a lot of success so far since Brendon McCullum, their red-ball head coach, and Ben Stokes, their captain, taught them a new, more aggressive way to play. The Three Lions have lost three of their last 14 games. They have won 11 of those games.
Stokes’s decision to declare on the first day at 393 raised some eyebrows, but England has chosen to stick to their plan for the next few games. Even though they lost, Stokes and others have said they want to keep going with the Bazball way.
Ollie Robinson’s Wisden piece says that McCullum told the players after the Edgbaston game that he thought they had won because they made Australia look bad and kept the crowd interested.
Boycott, who attacked the Bazball method very strongly, didn’t like it at all. The England veteran did enjoy the game, but he said on the Vaughany and Tuffers Cricket Club show that he thinks England has lost sight of their main goal, which is to win. Fox Cricket reported on this.
Geoffrey Boycott said that England had stopped thinking because they were too far ahead of themselves and that they might as well be a show if all they cared about was pleasing their fans.
“I liked the cricket; it kept you on the edge of your seat. England was winning every practice, but they still lost the game. This should teach them something for the next test. They forgot that their main goal was to win. If they wanted to make the crowd laugh after that, that was fine, Boycott said.
“But why can’t you win and keep the crowd entertained at the same time?
“When you get ahead of yourself, you stop thinking, and that’s what England did.”
“I know what people in England will say if you ask them if they’d rather be entertained and lose the Ashes or win the Ashes.”
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