Bazball is dead: Shovelling the dirt on Test cricket's failed experiment

We gather here today to shovel dirt on the failed experiment that was Bazball.

An adventure conceived in freedom, expanse and aggression.

A style to revolutionise the staid format of Test cricket… that ultimately fell at the disciplines and demands required in the longest, most testing discipline in professional sport.

Bazball proved more of a social movement than a sporting strategy.

Adopted with a cult-like fervour, it briefly invigorated a miserable people.

Its protagonists and boosters preached its superiority and declared it the way, the truth and the light… all should follow or be left behind.

But Bazball didn’t win anything.

Its victories were moral, not tangible.

Removing consequence from professional sport was a thought bubble that exploded under the first sign of pressure.

England’s cricketers bailed out rather than dug in.

They created positions of promise through outrageous enterprise and then squandered them through compulsion.

Consolidation was boring… seemingly beneath them.

When the self-delusion melts away, there were four series to judge the success of the program.

At home, England failed to beat either Australia or India – both series were drawn 2-2, highlighted by moments of recklessness and foolishness.

Away, they were thrashed 4-1… as inept as any previous generation to the challenges of the subcontinent and down under.

Bazball won nothing… that is what should be chiselled on its gravestone.

The flawed concept was one thing… the lack of discipline quite another.

England tried to be a pub team on the professional circuit.

It ended embarrassingly and woefully.

First, the captain fell in a brazen display of self-aggrandisement… celebrated as a hero as the world burned behind him.

And now the coach and architect has been sacked.

A move that should have been made within 48 hours of the Ashes and the revelations of the Harry Brook cover-up.

England was convinced Bazball was going to change the world.

Today it joins history’s lists of false prophecies and failed cults.

It will be studied for generations to come as a cautionary tale.

But it won’t be missed.