Bazball: Origins, Tactics and How It Ended

In the winter and spring of 2022 England had won one of their previous seventeen Test matches. Joe Root resigned the captaincy in April. Rob Key, newly installed as managing director of England men's cricket, appointed Ben Stokes as captain and Brendon McCullum as head coach of the Test side, a man who had never coached a first-class team and had spent his post-playing career in Twenty20 franchises.

On 24 May 2022, on a podcast, ESPNcricinfo's UK editor Andrew Miller called the anticipated approach "Bazball", after McCullum's nickname. The word stuck immediately and comprehensively, to the visible irritation of almost everyone inside the dressing room, McCullum included. It is now the standard shorthand for a four-year period of England Test cricket that ended in July 2026.

This page sets out what the method actually was, which matches demonstrated it, and how the four years went — including the parts that did not work, because they are the majority of the record after 2023.

What was actually changed

Strip out the vocabulary and the changes were specific and mostly tactical.

Batting intent. Batters were told to score, and to use limited-overs shot-making in Test cricket where the situation permitted it and sometimes where it did not. The measurable effect was enormous: England's run rate through the first year of the method ran at around 4.65 an over, against a previous record for a Test side of about 3.66. That is not a marginal shift in tempo. It is a different sport's scoring rate applied to five-day cricket.

Chasing rather than setting. Stokes consistently chose to bat second and chase a target, which runs against a century of Test orthodoxy. The reasoning was that a defined target simplifies decisions and that a chasing side with attacking batters is in a stronger psychological position than a side defending a lead.

Attacking fields. Fielders were placed to take catches rather than to save runs, with slips and catchers retained long after a conventional captain would have spread the field. The trade was explicit: concede boundaries, buy wickets.

Declaration bowling. Innings were closed early to get at a batting side in the best available conditions, on the calculation that time and pressure were worth more than the runs forgone.

The nighthawk. In place of the nightwatchman — a lower-order batter sent in late in the day to survive — England sent in a hitter with instructions to attack. The logic was that a Test is more likely to be lost by twenty defensive overs than by a lower-order batter getting out swinging.

The framing. The last change was cultural rather than technical, and it matters. Stokes said repeatedly that the side's obligation was to entertain and to try to win, and that losing while attempting to win was acceptable. The draw was effectively removed as an objective. Whether that is a strength or an abdication is the argument the whole period comes down to.

June 2022: three chases

The method's first month remains its best evidence. England played New Zealand at home and won 3-0, chasing in all three matches.

At Lord's they chased 279 and won by five wickets, Joe Root making 115 not out and passing ten thousand Test runs. At Trent Bridge they chased 299 from 55 for six, Jonny Bairstow making 136 from 92 balls including a hundred from 77, and won by five wickets. At Headingley they chased 296 and won by seven wickets, having required only 113 on the final morning and taken 15.2 overs over it.

England became the first side to chase more than 250 to win three consecutive Tests. Coming from a team that had won one of seventeen, in a series against the reigning world Test champions, it was as complete a vindication as a new method could ask for.

The following month at Edgbaston England chased 378 against India — the highest successful chase in their history — with Root and Bairstow both unbeaten centurions. By August 2022 the argument appeared settled.

Rawalpindi, and the high-water mark

On 1 December 2022, on the first day of the first Test against Pakistan at Rawalpindi, England scored 506 for four in 75 overs. That is 6.75 an over, in a Test match, on day one.

Zak Crawley reached a hundred in 86 balls, the fastest by an England opener. Harry Brook reached his in 80. England eventually declared on 657, Pakistan replied, England declared again, and England won by 74 runs on a surface that had every appearance of a certain draw.

Rawalpindi is the match to point to if the question is what the method could do that conventional Test cricket could not. No orthodox England side wins that game. They bat for a day and a half, Pakistan bat for two, and the match is drawn on the fifth afternoon. England won it by scoring quickly enough to create time that did not otherwise exist.

England won that series 3-0. The Dukes ball is not used in Pakistan and the conditions in which the method worked best were rarely English ones — the ball's own peculiarities are the subject of the guide to the Dukes ball, and the way English squares change through a summer is covered in the guide to pitch conditions by season.

Edgbaston 2023, and the first real bill

The 2023 Ashes was where the method met a side good enough to punish it, and the first Test set the terms.

England batted first at Edgbaston and declared on 393 for eight after 78 overs, with Root 118 not out and wickets still in hand. The declaration was made to get at Australia on the evening of day one. Australia made 386. England made 273 second time round, setting 281. Australia chased it and won by two wickets, with Usman Khawaja batting on all five days of the match.

The series finished 2-2. Australia won at Lord's by 43 runs, England won at Headingley by three wickets and at The Oval by 49, and Old Trafford was drawn after rain arrived with England in a commanding position. Australia retained the urn, which under the convention they held it as holders.

Two readings of that series have coexisted ever since and both are defensible. The first is that England, having been comfortably beaten in the previous three Ashes series, took the world's best side to a draw and would have won had it not rained in Manchester. The second is that England lost the two Tests they could have drawn, and that the Edgbaston declaration cost them the series. Neither reading has ever been settled. The broader Ashes context is in the guide to the Ashes.

The years the results stopped coming

What happened after 2023 is the part of the record that has to be stated plainly.

England toured India in early 2024 and lost 4-1, having won the first Test at Hyderabad by 28 runs after being 190 behind on first innings — Ollie Pope making 196 and Tom Hartley taking seven wickets on debut. India then won four in a row.

In October 2024 England went to Pakistan and made 823 for seven declared in the first Test at Multan, Harry Brook scoring 317 and Root 262, and won by an innings. Pakistan then prepared surfaces for their spinners and won the next two, taking the series 2-1.

The home series against India in 2025 finished 2-2.

Then the Ashes. England went to Australia in November 2025 and lost the series 4-1. Australia won at Perth by eight wickets inside two days, with Mitchell Starc taking seven for 58 and Travis Head making 123 from 83 balls. Australia won the day-night Test at Brisbane by eight wickets, despite Root finally making a Test century in Australia — 138 not out, at the twelfth attempt across five tours. Australia won at Adelaide by 82 runs to retain the Ashes 3-0 up with two to play, their fastest retention since 2002-03. England won the Boxing Day Test at the MCG by four wickets, Josh Tongue taking five for 45 to end a 27-year England wait for a win at that ground, in front of a first-day crowd of 94,199 — a record attendance for any day of cricket. Australia won at Sydney by five wickets, where Jacob Bethell made 154 for his first Test century.

Series	Result
New Zealand, home 2022	England won 3-0
India, Edgbaston 2022	England won
Pakistan, away 2022-23	England won 3-0
Ashes, home 2023	Drawn 2-2, Australia retained
India, away 2024	India won 4-1
Pakistan, away 2024	Pakistan won 2-1
India, home 2025	Drawn 2-2
Ashes, away 2025-26	Australia won 4-1
New Zealand, home 2026	New Zealand won 2-1

June 2026: it ended where it started

New Zealand toured England in June 2026 for three Tests, four years after the series that launched the method against the same opponents.

England won at Lord's by 115 runs. New Zealand won at The Oval by 253 and at Trent Bridge by 160, taking the series 2-1 and the Crowe-Thorpe Trophy for the first time. Nathan Smith took sixteen wickets across the three matches, Matt Henry took his first ten-wicket haul, and Glenn Phillips made his maiden Test century. Ben Duckett was England's leading scorer with 246 runs across six innings, which is a figure that describes the batting as clearly as any commentary could.

It was Stokes's last series. He announced his retirement from international cricket during it, and he did not play the second Test at The Oval, having been suspended following an incident on 8 June, with Root captaining in his place. McCullum's position was terminated on 12 July 2026.

The symmetry is uncomfortable and unavoidable: the method began with three chases against New Zealand and ended with two heavy defeats by New Zealand at home.

The honest assessment

The strongest case for the period is that it rescued England's Test cricket from a state of collapse, produced some of the most watchable cricket the country has staged, and won matches — Rawalpindi, Edgbaston 2022, Hyderabad — that no conventional England side of that era would have won. It also drew crowds. That is not a trivial achievement in a format losing audiences everywhere.

The strongest case against is the record after mid-2023: one drawn home Ashes, two drawn home series, four series defeats including 4-1 in India and 4-1 in Australia. The specific failure mode was consistent and well documented by critics from the start — a batting order playing high-risk cricket against high-class bowling collapses more often than it accelerates, and against Australia and India it collapsed repeatedly. Geoff Boycott's early objection, that the method was naive against elite bowlers, was rejected at the time and reads better now than it did then.

The most useful conclusion is narrower than either camp usually allows. The method worked in conditions where the alternative was a stalemate — flat subcontinental surfaces, dead fourth innings, matches heading for draws — and it worked against attacks that could be knocked off their length. It did not work against Starc, Cummins, Hazlewood, Bumrah, Ashwin and Jadeja, or against the Dukes ball in the hands of a disciplined New Zealand attack. It was, on the evidence, a good answer to a particular set of problems that was then applied to every problem.

What comes next for England is unresolved at the time of writing. The Test side needs a captain, a coach and a settled top order, and the domestic structure that has to supply them is under the same pressure it has been under for a decade — a pressure described in the guides to the County Championship, English domestic cricket structure and the ECB's governance. The bowling tradition the side will draw on is covered in the guide to England's seam bowling tradition, and the wider history of the job Stokes has just left is in the guide to England's Test captains. The rest of the English game sits on the cricket in England hub.

Sources and method

This page is based on the published record of England Test matches from June 2022 to June 2026: series results, scorecards and margins for the matches described, including the 2022 New Zealand and Pakistan series, the 2023 Ashes, the 2024 tours of India and Pakistan, the 2025-26 Ashes and the 2026 New Zealand series. The coining of the term follows the documented podcast attribution of 24 May 2022. Scoring-rate comparisons are as recorded in published Test statistics rather than computed by us. Appointments, the suspension during the 2026 series, Ben Stokes's retirement and Brendon McCullum's departure follow the England and Wales Cricket Board's own announcements and contemporaneous reporting. The closing assessment is argument, offered as such.