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The Bazballers’ boldness broke India’s astonishing run of success at home. England’s 28-run victory in the first Test in Hyderabad was a triumph of the team’s unwavering faith in a system that has no place for fear of failure. On a spin-friendly pitch, the kind on which many visiting teams have collapsed, England’s miracle workers were not the usual suspects. Those who pulled off this savage robbery for England were not match winners Joe Root and ben stokes. The heroes of England were Tom Hartley, a debutant spinnerand Ollie Pope, a batsman with a modest Test record.
Left-arm spinner Hartley, 24, a T20 specialist with just 20 first-class games under his belt, tore through the Indian batting side with his aggressive straight line to finish with figures of 7/62 in the second over. entrance. This was after Pope, a nervous wreck in the first innings, put together an innings of 196 that featured a variety of brave and unconventional shots. Both in their twenties, Hartley and Pope seemed heavily indoctrinated into the bold style of cricket that England has adopted under the leadership of coach Brendon McCullum and captain Stokes.
Making everyone in the locker room believe that nothing is impossible has been the essence of Bazball. Beating India with a spinner is the most feared task in the game. It involves multiple levels of competition. First, the visiting team must beat the batsmen, then the spinners and finally the pitch. Stokes’ men did it all in two magnificent days.
The England captain would call the Hyderabad win “100 per cent our biggest win”. He would go on to applaud Hartley and Pope’s efforts. “Tom (Hartley) came into the team for the first time. He was willing to give her longer spells. We fully stand behind the people we have selected. Pope’s 190 on that wicket… is the best innings ever played in the subcontinent by an English batsman. I’m not afraid of failure, I try to encourage whoever is on the roster,” he said. Home captain Rohit Sharma seemed to be struggling for answers. “It’s difficult to determine where it went wrong. With a lead of 190 we were in control…”
In a stretch where no other batsman reached three figures, Pope did so with Kevin Pietersen-like audacity, with a streak of courage that belied his teenage face. Pope, who had a horror tour of India in 2021 where his highest score was 34, has not made many technical changes to his batting since the last time, but there is a visible change in approach. The spin of the ball did not scare him or his colleagues. If his nerves trembled, they hid it with their cold, mean eyes. They remained firm in their convictions to attack their way out of problems.
England had conceded a 190-run lead in the first innings, but there was no reversal, or even revision, of the approach. At no point in the game did they accept anything against their system. If they were to fall, they would prefer to do so by attacking. It was always about being arrogant and not stupid.
This brave approach amazed Indian spinners. They are more accustomed to seeing fear flickering in the corners of their opponents’ eyes. They froze before the attack of the four. Pope’s game was full of risks, but no blow of his was tentatively tested. Each hit had a purpose and not like a blind shot in the dark.
At first glance, England’s methods would seem reckless. Instead, it is a careful dismemberment of a stellar cast of Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. Stokes and his men have shown the world that Indian conditions can be overcome by being brave, taking advantage of luck and getting the spinners out of the attack.
English batsmen spent hours training their instincts and impulses in new ways, shaping a new set of muscle memory. So Pope and Ben Duckett rehearse the reverse scoop as sweetly and naturally as they would in a cover campaign. Bazball is not a whim but a practiced art.
Hartley in the second innings discovered his rhythm and broke through India’s top order in transition. In a way, he was questioning India’s confidence in its youngsters, making viewers wonder if Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane were prematurely thrown out into the cold.
With Virat Kohli deciding not to take part in the first two Tests, the batting order was looking shaky. Opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, 22, is untested against top-order bowling; Shubman Gill, 24, appears vulnerable to the fallout and needs domestic rehabilitation, and Shreyas Iyer has been woefully inconsistent. Lacking Rishab Pant’s firepower, India were too dependent on Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul.
More than any of these flaws, what would really worry India is that its most successful tool of domination has been dismantled. India have lost home Tests in the past but this one was different. In Hyderabad, India seem to have lost their aura of invincibility at home. They would go into the next Test knowing that they could be beaten with turners and now need to come up with their own system to beat the English system.