Former England captain and Nasser Hussain asked the England team to not lose themselves in the Bazball term and instead individual players should play according to the conditions. This verdict from the respected commentator comes in the aftermath of England’s 4-1 series loss in India.
Nasser Hussain wrote in his column for Sky Sports, “There is too much said and written about Bazball. We get lost in that term and the team do not like it. It is about individual performances in those conditions.”
The 55-year-old English commentator is more hurt by England’s batting capitulations in the second half of the series in particular.
In each of their second innings in the last three Tests, England have been bowled out for under 200 and once for 218. In Dharamsala, it was harakiri in both innings as a number of batters got out while playing aggressive shots, shots which simply didn’t have a chance against the Indian bowling on what were good surfaces.
Nasser Hussain also lambasted England for their batting failures on good pitches in the series; for example, while India scored 477 in Dharamsala, England managed 218 and 195.
Hussain encapsulated the Dharamsala Test as: “The final Test was like the old-school England in India in the last decade or so – it was a very one-sided affair.”
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The batting collapses will be the main issue from this tour: Nasser Hussain
Hussain reckons England did “they had their chances in the series,” but Ben Stokes’ side failed to grab those chances and suffered their first series defeat in the Bazball era.
The former skipper pointed out that the struggles of the middle-order, underscoring it as the main reason for their failure in this series. While there were three Indian batters who scored 400 runs or more, for England it was only Zak Crawley who reached the 400-run mark in the series. Skipper Ben Stokes had a terrible series with the bat as he managed only 199 runs.
Nasser Hussain asserted: “The batting collapses will be the main issue from this tour. There have been so many occasions where they have got off to decent starts and the middle order has then collapsed.
“It can happen in India but the pitches in this series have been brilliant so England can have no complaints about that. Plus, they won three tosses out of five.
“They will look at those collapses and say, ‘what could we have done differently in those positions to make sure it doesn’t happen again?’ because it did happen again.”
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