The most talked about word in the cricket world in the last 6 months is ‘BazzBall’, which has changed the English cricket team dramatically.
Image Credit source: PTI
In just 6 and a half months, the thinking and style of two people has enthralled an entire cricket, an entire country and every part of the cricket-loving world. In such a short time, hardly anyone has made such a big and such a tremendous impact on cricket in the last few decades. Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum are the leaders of this change, who have revolutionized the England Test team. Not only by the way of playing, but also by the results. The Test series victory in Pakistan is the latest chapter in this short but impactful story.
In the Multan Test on Monday, 12 December, Ben Stokes’ team won the second match in a row by stopping Pakistan just 26 runs before victory. The English team, which reached Pakistan after 17 years, not only ended the wait of many years to go to Pakistan, but also won the first Test series on its land after 22 years. All the credit for this goes to Stokes and McCullum, who have turned a team that won just one Test in a year into a ‘winning machine’.
Revolution started in June
Ben Stokes, who took over the reins of England in June after Joe Root, and McCullum, who was appointed as the new coach, tried to infuse new energy into the English team and its mantra was fearless and fearless cricket. It started by defeating New Zealand 3-0 in their own land, from where the batting started in ODI and T20 style in Test. Then defeated that Indian team in the only test, against which they were getting beaten in their grounds last year. When South Africa gave a blow, it seemed that the ‘baseball’ bubble had burst, but in the next two matches, this team uprooted South Africa.
Real ‘baseball’ shown in Pakistan
Yet all this was at home and his biggest Test was to be held in Pakistan, where none of the other cricketers in this team had ever tasted Test cricket except James Anderson. Which was considered to be the biggest challenge, while the biggest example of Stokes-McCullum’s ‘baseball brand cricket’ was found. It was not the record of scoring 504 runs on the first day of the Rawalpindi Test, nor were the four batsmen’s fiery centuries.
Evidence of this was found on the fourth day of the match, when England declared their second innings despite the possibility of defeat in an attempt to achieve their result, setting a target of 343 runs for victory in front of Pakistan, with 100 overs to play and Pindi Stadium The pitch was as flat as the day before,
Despite this, at the age of 40, under the leadership of a legend like James Anderson, on that flat pitch, the England bowlers defeated Pakistan by a comfortable margin of 74 runs, registering their first victory in Pakistan after 22 years. Now a 26-run victory in Multan With this, England once again won the series along with the Test match by defeating Pakistan despite not having a big target. In his last tour of Pakistan, he had to face defeat by 0-2 and now he has a chance of clean sweep.
numbers are proof
If the effect of McCullum-Stokes is to be understood from the game of statistics, then there is enough evidence for that too. The first is that England toured Pakistan for the first time 61 years ago. Since then till the last tour of 2005, he had won only 2 Test matches in Pakistan. Now he has won two matches in one series only. This is a big achievement in itself.
The second proof is the most important and the most powerful. In the last one year under the duo of Joe Root and Chris Silverwood (then coach) before Stokes-McCullum took charge in June, England had played 12 Tests, winning just 1, losing 7 and drawing 4. were staying In contrast, from June till the Multan Test, England have played 9 Tests, in which they have registered 8 wins and only one defeat. None draw. Means now things will be done only by win or loss, not by draw.
Source: www.tv9hindi.com