As England bat in the first innings, lots of Australians will be asking: what exactly is this Bazball business everyone keeps banging on about?<\/p>\n
While he did more damage with the ball than with the bat, no one knows what Bazball means for England better than Stuart Broad.<\/p>\n
Broad, who retired after the 2023 Ashes series, played for one year under the Brendon McCullum-led philosophy of aggressive batting during Test matches.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n The tactic didn\u2019t seem to work for Zac Crawley after he fell for a duck in the first over to Mitchell Starc.<\/p>\n Broad explained on Channel Seven\u2019s coverage this morning before play what Bazball really meant.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about freeing the guys\u2019 mindset. You\u2019re under pressure all the time from external sources, so it\u2019s about trying to change the mindset in the changing room, to take the game on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty much exactly what Australia have done for years. Travis Head does it now. Not being scared to get out. It\u2019s a language in the changing room that encourages the players to run towards the danger, just go towards the pressure, to take on the game.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a batting mindset more than bowling – the job there is to go out and take 10 wickets as quickly as you can.<\/p>\n \u201cBut England players in the past have sometimes gone into their shell, trying to protect themselves or their position in a batting unit, rather than play fully for the team and the style.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you look at it in the 2023 Ashes in England the Australian bowlers\u2019 economy rates were higher than they have ever been before.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you let Hazlewood come into bowl and Starc just bowl, they will not miss, and they\u2019ll put you under pressure all day. If you try and put them off that length, then you have a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n Broad, who defended his comments that this was Australia\u2019s worst home Ashes side since 2010\u201311 to The Nightly earlier this week, again stood by his argument.<\/p>\n He said the assessment was based on how good the Australians have been since that series at home, having not lost a Test to England here for 15 years.<\/p>\n But he said with both Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood out through injury and Jake Weatherald making his debut as an opener, Australia was not as sure of itself as it had previously been.<\/p>\n \u201cThey never have doubts over who\u2019s going to open the batting. They never seem to have injury worries – Pat Cummins, Hazlewood -when do they ever miss games against England?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there\u2019s a bit of a haze over the Australian side a little bit. But let\u2019s not be wrong, they\u2019re a fantastic, fantastic team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As England bat in the first innings, lots of Australians will be asking: what exactly is this Bazball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,588,85],"class_list":["post-298406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}