It is time for freakishly gifted Harry Brook to come of age in England’s post-Bazball era | Ali Martin

You have to hand it to Bazball. Even when seemingly killed off, and the England team it left behind is thousands of miles away, preparing for a series against Pakistan, it has still managed to muscle its way into the fallout from Bangladesh’s seismic victory over Australia in Darwin. Talk about main character energy.

By definition, that nine-wicket victory for Bangladesh was no fluke. Najmul Hossain Shanto’s men didn’t jag a tight one but rather dominated their hosts over four days. And in doing so, they also managed to unite Ashes rivals by demonstrating what a golden opportunity England blew against Australia’s greybeards last winter.

To say as much back then was to risk being called as deluded as the team itself; to be an enabler of the hubris that underpinned England’s gung-ho approach. Stuart Broad, for example, was widely lampooned for saying that Australia, though an excellent side, were ageing and as vulnerable as they had been for a long time.

But plenty of Australian voices are now making the same point, either directly or by implication. A common refrain has been that, had England batted “sensibly” – ie with the same gimlet-eyed application of Bangladesh in a match-defining 400-plus total amassed over 138 overs – that sorry 4-1 defeat could have been very different.

While England’s bowling has been forgotten here – Bangladesh opted against feeding Travis Head’s cut shot like it was a goose being fattened for foie gras – thoughts certainly do go back to the defining collapses in Perth and Brisbane, when a string of batters hardwired to attack ignored the risk that seemed so obvious.

Among them was Harry Brook, whose most recent act in the whites of England was to go down swinging against New Zealand and trigger another wave of chuntering about there being more brains in a pork pie. Brook was following team orders but all people saw was 21 off nine balls and yet another example of Harry-kiri.

In a parallel universe Brook is about to captain England’s Test team for the first time at his home ground of Headingley this week. Instead, England have turned back to Joe Root as the successor to Ben Stokes, with Rob Key saying the vacancy had come “too soon” for Brook and hinting that greater maturity was needed.

Perhaps it was too great an ask for Brook to lead across all three formats, or too messy to hive off the T20 captaincy to another player under split coaches. Of course the unsaid bit here is that nightclub incident in Wellington last November – the spark for the chain reaction that ultimately created the vacancy.

Although beyond learning that knocking back hazy pale ales the night before captaining in a one-day international is probably a bad idea, how much does Brook actually need to change his approach?

Clearly driving on the up in unfamiliar Perth was not smart from Brook, likewise trying to larrup Mitchell Starc under lights in his first pink-ball Test. Overall his Ashes was disappointing and a year has passed since his last Test century – a period in which wicketkeepers Alex Carey and Tom Blundell standing up to the quicks has caused him issues.

But as much as the removal of Brendon McCullum as England’s Test head coach after the 2-1 defeat by New Zealand signals a desire for the pendulum to swing back a touch overall, Brook feels the very least of their problems right now. The fact is, for all that his dismissals can be triggering in the moment, Brook has already put up the kind of numbers that mark him out as a truly remarkable talent. After 38 Tests he averages 53, has scored 10 centuries (including a triple in Multan), and he sits second in the Test batting rankings behind Head.

As per the good people at CricViz, Brook has achieved this by trying to smack 44% of deliveries to or over the boundary – a figure only Head can match. More broadly, the 27-year-old looks to score off 65% of balls he faces, and defend or leave 35%. The average split for top-seven batters since his debut in 2022 has been 52/48.

The lazy assumption is that this has been achieved on flat pitches. But while true Brook is lethal in these conditions – Pakistan know better than anyone, victims of four Brook centuries on home soil, including that career-best 317 – like Head, he can come into his own when the ball is doing plenty for the bowlers.

His century in Wellington in late 2024 is a prime example, compiled from just 91 balls, and on an opening day when 15 wickets tumbled. A personal view is that he should have been player of the match in Melbourne last winter, with his 41 on the opening day of that crapshoot absolutely central to the end result.

Naturally people still want more. Stokes even took Brook aside at the end of that Ashes series and told him he should be averaging “65, even 70” in Test cricket. The diagnosis here was that Brook, like a lot of modern players, has a 360-degree armoury of shots but is still learning when and where to deploy them.

For AB de Villiers, whose remarkable hand-eye ability was comparable to Brook, it similarly comes down to risk assessment; being able to spot when the odds are against him and, whether it is five deliveries or an hour, holding firm until it flips in his favour. “Definitely don’t lose the aggressive nature of your batting or the creative side,” De Villiers told For The Love of Cricket. “Just earn the right.”

As per a recent chat with BBC Sport, Brook acknowledges this and gets as frustrated as the next person at some of his dismissals. But his stated aim is still to be a matchwinner for England first and foremost. “I have the ability to hit it everywhere, I just have to figure it out quicker in games,” he said.

Some supporters may recoil at this but really they should be encouraged. As much as the excesses of Bazball squandered a golden chance in Australia, overall it allowed the freakishly gifted Brook to discover the limits of what is possible. Avoid an over-correction and this tricky last year could yet be the making of him.