The five-centimetre difference that spells trouble for Bazball in Australia

When Zak Crawley hit Pat Cummins for four to start the 2023 Ashes, it made even Ben Stokes’ jaw drop.

Players with Crawley’s ho-hum record should notionally be affording more respect to a player of Cummins’ standing, yet here he was driving the world’s best bowler through cover first ball.

The sheer audacity did not foreshadow a reclamation of the urn for England but set the tone for the series: Baz and Ben’s men would attack Australia like no team ever has.

But can this style of play flourish in Australia and allow Brendon “Baz” McCullum’s cricket evangelists to do what only one England touring party has done in nearly 40 years? Leave these shores with the replica urn in tow.

England’s likely starting XI in Perth will include five players who featured in their last shambolic campaign here – but the side is unrecognisable in the manner they play, particularly with the bat.

A traditionally stodgy and conservative team, England have been anything but that since McCullum’s appointment in 2022 and his institutionalisation of Bazball, as their bold, brash and brazen approach has come to be known. No side has scored more quickly than their 4.56 runs per over.

Nearly 150 years of history is against England in Australia. Of course, what happened in 1885 has no bearing on 2025, but it provides context. No visiting team has done what England will attempt to do in the next seven weeks – score at higher than four runs an over in alien conditions.

Since the fall of the West Indies in the 1990s, touring teams have generally come to Australia and lost. They arrive at these shores unprepared for the extra bounce, unforgiving heat and the flies. Often, they are beaten before they have landed.

Why Root does not dominate in Australia

As Australia’s fast bowlers will attest, pitches in this country lost their lustre in the late 2010s but have regained their pace and bounce since the pandemic.

According to PitchViz, Australia is the toughest country in the world to face fast bowling in the past five years. The pitches here are the bounciest, quickest and second most inconsistent – all factors that should discourage extravagant strokeplay.

Since 2020, Australia have the second-fullest average length – 6.22 metres – needed to clip the top of the stumps; that’s about 35 centimetres fuller than in England.

It sounds minor but has a pronounced impact. Look at Joe Root’s record in Australia, where he has not scored a century from 14 Tests across three tours. His average here of 36 is that of a steady player rather than a modern great.

Root loves the dab to third man. It’s his pressure valve release to get a single and get off strike. According to stats from CricViz, 20 per cent of Root’s controlled runs against pace have come behind square on the off-side, which is unusually high for a right-handed batter.

It is a safe shot on English tracks but not here. Since 2020, deliveries pitching between seven and 7.5 metres pass the stumps five centimetres higher in Australia.

It’s a fine margin but also the difference between the ball being safely glided off the stickers of the bat to the fielder at deep third or hitting the top edge on a cross-batted shot into the gloves of Alex Carey or the hands of Australia’s slips cordon.

“In the UK, he takes the piss with those shots,” former England captain and Fox Cricket analyst Michael Vaughan said.

“He hits it into the gap. It might be a minute gap, he just knows how to work it.

“Against the ball that nips back, you can get over to off stump to try and cover the bounce in Australia. The ball that nips back becomes more of a threat as well.

“I’m not going to tell him to leave those balls because he’s too good a player. If he can find a cut shot rather than just a straight bat glide, he’ll get loads of opportunities. The Aussies will bowl fourth or fifth stump to him and try and snick him off.”

Root will seldom get a better opportunity to break his century drought in Australia than in Perth. Cummins has dismissed him 11 times at an average of 26.45 and Hazlewood 10 at 31.9. Both are injured. He is dominant against Mitchell Starc (eight at 44) and Nathan Lyon (eight at 55).

Scott Boland, with four wickets at 25.75, has enjoyed success against him but it pre-dates the McCullum era.

Though Root has become a more attacking player in the Bazball era, he remains the centrepiece of England’s batting.

“He’s the key,” Vaughan said. “If he bats and bats and bats long, the firecrackers can play and one or two of them will come off. If he gets out to them early, I think it sends a shudder through the England dressing room.”

The opener who hates leaving the ball

Ben Duckett is one of the firecrackers Vaughan is referencing. No player embodies the Bazball ethos more.

Of the 2252 deliveries he has faced in his 34 Tests under McCullum, Duckett has left just 54 balls, or just 2.39 per cent. In India in 2024, he did not leave a ball at all, while there have been four other series where he has shouldered arms just once or twice.

Like many in the England squad, Duckett has not played longer-form cricket for several months. A typically rollicking 92 off 97 balls last week at Lilac Hill will give him confidence, but it came on a benign deck where the quicks bent their backs yet struggled to get the ball much above waist height to the batter.

Numbers from CrizViz show Duckett murders bowling that is either too straight or wide – but he is most vulnerable to good or full-length balls in the channel outside off stump, where he averages 25.77 and 29.85 respectively – well below his career average of nearly 43.

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“He will go chasing that channel,” Vaughan said. “It’s whether the extra bounce in Australia gets him. He’ll be fine if he gets going early, but if he snicks one or two early, it plays on your mind. He’s a class player – a very, very good player. I think he will adjust.”

England have invested heavily in his opening partner, Crawley, despite his inconsistency. The theory is when he does get going, he can play agenda-setting innings, as seen by his 189 at Old Trafford two years ago and a game-changing 73 at The Oval.

Crawley is a boundary hitter. Boundaries prompt more defensive fields, reducing the threat of dismissal. For conventional batters, batting should become easier because easy singles are available. Crawley, though, is not a conventional batter.

“India put cover point on the boundary in the last Test at The Oval, and he didn’t like it,” Vaughan said. “He was hitting good shots for one. Australia will do the same. They won’t allow him to get all these boundaries early.

“They’ll know if they build dots, he’ll go chasing the boundary. This is his role in the side.”

The Australians won’t mind Crawley playing expansively. The extra bounce in Perth and Brisbane will not be as accommodating as the made-to-order flat tracks of home. This time, the deck will be stacked against him.

“You still want to be encouraging the cover drive on flattish conditions but in our conditions with the extra grass, pace and bounce, I’d be leaving cover open,” Damien Fleming, the former Test swing man turned analyst for Seven, said.

“If Crawley wants to go into one of his big cover drives, even if he gets a couple in the middle, the odds of him nicking behind or an inside edge are massive.”

Flash Harry

Harry Brook is England’s Travis Head – the flashy wildcard at No.5 who can change games in a session.

The data suggests Australia should err on the side of bowling fuller lengths to Brook, who is most vulnerable to good-length balls in the channel outside off (10 wickets at 25).

This is Boland’s zone, where he has struck 27 times at a measly 6.18. When batters spar at Boland, a knockout punch usually comes back.

The key to dismissing Brook, Vaughan says, is to get him in early when the ball is harder and the seam prouder. Good and fuller-length deliveries on the stumps (three at 29.33, and three at 30) are a worry.

CrizViz data points to Mitchell Starc being a threat with the new ball, particularly if he can shape the ball back into the right-hander.

“If it’s moving laterally, I think Australia will fancy their chances,” Vaughan said. “If it goes flat, they’ll pepper him and go short.”

If Australia bump him, they need to make him reach by going short and wide (two wickets at nine) instead of attacking the stumps (one wicket at 69) or in the channel outside off (two at 64.5).

Stokes’ kryptonite

Stokes’s epic innings at Headingley in 2019 and his rearguard from the controversial run chase at Lord’s in 2023 are seared into the psyche of the Australian cricket fan. The picture of Cummins, Hazlewood and co bouncing Stokes, only to be clobbered to the rope, is difficult to erase.

A batter who loves to free his arms, Stokes’s kryptonite is the good-length ball on the stumps (eight wickets at 8.5) though he also has issues against hard and full lengths on this line.

If Stokes starts against the older ball, expect Steve Smith or Cummins to turn to off-spinner Nathan Lyon, who has claimed his wicket nine times. It would be 10 if Australia had not burned their reviews at Headingley. Only Ravichandran Ashwin, another off-spin great, has dismissed him more with 13.

The final word

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For all the debate over moral victories and stumping-inspired moral panics, Bazball undoubtedly worked in 2023.

Whatever your view on the effect of Manchester’s notoriously bad weather and England’s fortuitous changing of ball at The Oval on the series two years ago, it allowed a developing England team that had been hopelessly outclassed just 18 months earlier to draw 2-2.

England have reined in some of their excesses in favour of pragmatism. Their scoring rate this year of 4.35 runs per over is the lowest of the four years under McCullum, but still well above Australia’s during their golden run under Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting.

Fleming is not writing off England but holds reservations about the suitability of their game in Australia.

“They’ve played in swing and seam conditions in England, but there’ll be that extra pace and bounce,” Fleming said. “It will be alarming.”

Vaughan has predicted a series victory for the hosts but has faith their style can flourish in Australia – on one condition.

“I’ve always said Bazball with brains can win anywhere – it’s the brains that I worry about,” Vaughan quipped. “That’s my concern.”

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