England’s Test year review: Heist of Hyderabad to a hiding in Hamilton
Overall, Bazball is about hitting the ball. It is this area of ​​the England team that generates the most heated debate. The collective failure of England’s batsmen, devastating at their best, led to their most catastrophic defeats.
Take Ben Duckett, for example. He is the first England opener to score more than 1,000 runs in a calendar year since Alastair Cook in 2016. One of McCallum’s favorite metaphors is to point out that successful England openers are knighted. If we ignore Sir Sheff and Sir Andrew Strauss, the last person to score 1,000 points in a year was Marcus Trescothick in 2005.
Duckett was successful in many ways, but he was also the man who ran off the track and chopped Tim Southee onto his own stumps on night three at Hamilton. Maybe we can’t live without one. This is the epitome of Buzzball.
Duckett wasn’t under pressure, his opening partner was. Zach Crowley is to Matt Henry what David Warner is to Broad. Crawley has not reached 30 in his last 10 at-bats. Of all players to have opened the bat with at least 84 runs in Test cricket, only former Zimbabwe batsman Grant Flower has a lower average than Crowley’s 29.59. Same benefit.
England are fully behind Crawley. Like a broken clock that is accurate twice a day, they are counting on him to get the upper hand against India and Australia. Considering what he did to them at Old Trafford in 2023, Australia would be delighted if Crawley didn’t leave Perth within a year.
The England Ashes image below Crawley could have been shaped by a Surrey-born player who played for New Zealand.
Will O’Rourke’s horrific performance on day four in Hamilton was everything England could have hoped for in Australia. Pace, bounce and hostility. The best person to handle this is not Joe Root or Harry Brooke, two of the best batsmen in the world, but the 21-year-old Bethel.
In his three Tests, Bethell has shown the first glimmer of calm Ollie Pope could hope to have. Ahead of the Wellington Test, Stokes said he expected Pope to return to third place in the summer at home. After Hamilton, McCallum had the chance to back Pope, saying only that Bethel was a “headache” for England. The rhetoric has changed.
