1st Test: England will not abandon ‘Bazball’ despite heavy defeat | Cricket News

LONDON: Captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum have vowed to persist with England’s new attacking approach to Test cricket despite suffering a heavy innings defeat in Friday’s first Test against South Africa.
England’s new skipper and manager has taken an attacking approach to the Test arena, dubbed “Bazball“, and have chased impressive goals to win Tests against New Zealand and India over the past two months with a swashbuckling style and aggressive bowling spells.
But they were emphatically beaten by an innings and 12 runs at Lord’s in the first of a three-test series as South African bowlers reigned supreme, limiting England to 165 in their first innings and then sending them back for 149 on Friday.
Stokes, however, said there would be no changes when the second Test begins at Old Trafford next Thursday.
“Absolutely not. You know, I look at captains before me and they were always going to be criticized sometimes for the way they wanted to play, and that’s part and parcel of the job.
“We know well that when we play with the capacities that we are capable of, we can go out and put in an incredible performance, as everyone has seen in the previous four games.
“It’s absolutely not a wake-up call or anything. It’s just a shame we’re not able to execute the way we want to play this week,” Stokes said.
McCullum echoed the captain, dismissing the suggestion that the England batsmen might have been too cavalier against a strong bowling team.
“I don’t think so. I think maybe they were a bit shy. We approach the game with a clear mentality about how we want to play and we want to be the best versions of ourselves. It’s not going to work always,” he said.
“As we said at the time, you have to buckle up. It’s not nice at times like this but we will come back strong,” insisted the former New Zealand batsman.
“I think we weren’t quite capable of attacking when the opportunity came. Then we had a few balls which got rid of some of our best players. That’s cricket If you have a winner, you are going to have a loser, and South Africa deserved to win.”