Brendon McCullum loves his racing. So here’s an analogy that’ll resonate. Railing against the Bazball tag three years after it came to prominence is closing the stable door long after the horse has bolted.
England’s coach has a long history of being uncomfortable with the term that burst into the public’s consciousness in 2022, his first summer in charge.
Derived from the New Zealander’s nickname, Baz, it was meant as a compliment – something to describe the radical change in approach that transformed England from serial losers with one win in 17 before McCullum and captain Ben Stokes joined forces to a team having success playing attacking, thrilling cricket.
Messages from the dressing-room that were enthusiastically retold by players during media interactions – think Stuart Broad talking about “running towards the danger” – built into the Bazball legend.
England’s Bazball Test cricket approach transformed their fortunes (Photo: Getty)And most of all, results, including staggering chases against New Zealand at Trent Bridge and India at Edgbaston during McCullum’s first summer, fed the narrative that England were creating something special.
Giving the players freedom to express themselves, stating results were not the be-all and end-all and the “we don’t do draws mantra” fuelled Bazball mania.
McCullum and Stokes, though, never liked the term, feeling it was reductive and simplified their approach, allowing critics to write England off as brainless sloggers.
This was always wrong. But it didn’t stop England protesting about the name.
In July 2022, McCullum first criticised Bazball’s use, calling it a “silly term”.
This week, speaking to Jos Buttler and Broad on their For the Love of Cricket podcast, McCullum went one step further, saying: “I think there’s a bit of a misconception about how we play, that we swing the bat as hard as we can, we try to take wickets and then we go for a round of golf and a few beers.
“I find it slightly disrespectful to all of you guys [the players] and all of the people in the set-up who work so hard and have such clear determination of wanting to succeed, to have that so simply categorised, almost. It’s amazing. It’s almost like we’ve come up with the term. We haven’t come up with the term.”
“I find it slightly disrespectful.” Brendon McCullum admits he’s not too fond of the ‘Bazball’ label pic.twitter.com/U0IAz53bU8
— Test Match Special (@bbctms) September 9, 2025So what’s going on here? Why are England so tetchy about Bazball and why is McCullum seemingly trying to kill off the term ahead of this winter’s Ashes series in Australia?
Only teams that change the approach to their sport radically are ever bestowed with a nickname for their distinctive style. It’s the ultimate accolade – think the Dutch and Total Football or Barcelona and tiki-taka.
Yes, England have more than one way to play cricket. Yes, they attack when they see the opportunity and their run rates while batting are off the charts in comparison to what has gone before them. This is good. As is the team’s ability to shift gears and nail the opposition with patient, ruthless cricket such as in the Lord’s Test against India this summer.
They have evolved from that first summer and are a better team because of it. Is the approach infallible? Of course not. But it makes them damn competitive.
Yes, there are the occasional batting collapses – think that final Test against India at The Oval when England imploded to blow their chances of winning the series.
But collapses and the England cricket team have always been synonymous with each other. At least the Bazballers are entertaining to watch. And, as McCullum has said from the very start, they will win more than they lose – 25 to 14 so far – playing this way.
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To deny England are playing Test cricket differently to everyone else at the moment is to deny reality.
In his first media interaction as coach, McCullum signposted this would happen. “My first job is to try to bring a real fresh kind of approach and a relaxed kind of style – to simplify things somewhat, strip away some of the stuff that sits on the outside that doesn’t really matter but can affect you as a person and keep things as relaxed as possible,” he said at Lord’s in May 2022.
Job done. Now he needs to win a series against Australia or India, something his England team have failed to do in three previous attempts.
Australia are next up this winter. It is a huge opportunity. But it will be a step into the unknown for McCullum, who admitted on that podcast this week that he was unsure of what to expect.
“I know how you get judged on it and I know what we want to achieve out there but it’ll be how we handle the external pressures and the spotlight when you’re down there,” he said. “I haven’t been in a scenario personally where you’ve dealt with that down in Australia.”
This is the nub of McCullum’s latest Bazball protest. He knows the Australians are ideologically opposed to his methods. They hate what, in their eyes, they represent – English arrogance, a disrespect for how Test cricket should be played (ie. the “Australian way”), and the pomposity they feel comes from statements like McCullum saying he hopes his team can help save Test cricket.
It’s why Marnus Labuschagne described the inclusion of Bazball in the Collins Dictionary in 2023 as “garbage”, adding: “Seriously I don’t know what that is, honestly.”
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David Warner, speaking earlier this year, said: “I don’t know if Bazball is a myth now but I can’t see it happening in Australia. If that is the way they go it’s going to be high tempo, high energy and we’ll all get a couple of days off at the back end.”
These are sentiments that have been shared by countless other current and former Australian players, journalists, commentators and fans over the past three years.
It’s going to be brutal for England from the moment they land in Perth in early November. The whole Aussie cricketing ecosystem will do everything in its power to derail, diminish and destroy Bazball.
McCullum needs to embrace the phrase, reclaim it and wear it as a badge of honour. There’s no point trying to explain that England’s approach is more nuanced than just slogging. The haters have already made their minds up. They’re not for turning.
England have a huge opportunity to do something special in Australia this winter. But only if they lean into the Bazball legend.
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