‘Baz hates it’: Ben Stokes reveals England cricket team, especially Brendon McCullum, not too fond of term ‘bazball’

Even before the England cricket team had managed to emerge victorious in the first Test against India, the word ‘Bazball’ was making headlines. England cricket team’s revolutionary style of playing in Tests has earned them plenty of admirers.

But as it turns out, England coach Brendon McCullum, the man whose nickname (Baz) has inspired the term Bazball, is himself not a fan of the term. This revelation came when England cricket team captain Ben Stokes spoke to the local broadcaster before the five-match series began.

Stokes, in fact, said that the rest of the England cricket team too preferred to avoid the term.

“It’s a phrase that was created by the media. Something that we try and stay away from. It just came from what we have managed to do over the last two years and how we’ve played. We don’t necessarily like it, Baz (coach Brendon McCullum) hates it! Whenever that word pops up, we just try to say that’s how England plays Test cricket,” Stokes told JioCinema.

The term Bazball was even added to the Collins Dictionary last year. The definition noted in the dictionary for Bazball is: “A style of Test cricket in which the batting side attempts to gain the initiative by playing in a highly aggressive manner.”

So lethal was Bazball that it was one of Collins’ 10 words of the year for 2023. It was also shortlisted for the ‘Word of the Year’, a race where it eventually lost to AI (artificial intelligence).

Riding on their Bazball tactics, England overwhelmed India in the first Test at Hyderabad. The hosts were in the driving seat after the first innings, holding a 190-run lead, scoring 436 in reply to England’s 246. Then, while chasing a target of 231, India collapsed from 42-0 to being all out for 202 runs, falling 28 runs short. The win handed England a 1-0 lead in the five-match series. The second Test begins in Visakhapatnam on February 2.

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