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Watch The Ashes 2025\/26 LIVE and ad-break free during play with FOX CRICKET on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n ‘Embarrassing’: Pressure mounts on Jofra | 08:32<\/p>\n READ MORE <\/p>\n \u2018TENSIONS RISING\u2019: Inside dressing room spat, brutal Warne admission that sparked thriller<\/a><\/p>\n NEW BALL HINT? Inside three-way Aussie net shootout as reason for surprise Smith absence revealed<\/a><\/p>\n \u2018TURN IT ON\u2019: What Stokes told Archer to spark Smith spat as captain lifts lid<\/a><\/p>\n The worst thing about losing old \u2018Baz\u2019? The fickledom that has followed. Bazball could be a mood and when England was up and about and winning, and there was success before this tour, everyone was happy. But it had always had its convictions.<\/p>\n Under pressure, Bazball cracked up. It could not be relied upon when it mattered most. <\/p>\n Australia might be home to tall poppy syndrome, and while there many are mourning the Bazball implosion, it turns out there were no shortage of sceptics wary that a moment like this might befall the theory and fell England\u2019s ambitions.<\/p>\n But before Bazball is sent for its own cremation, some are pausing for reflection. Is it true? Like a religion fuelled by a come from the dead story, some including Aussie great Brett Lee can still sense a pulse in Bazball. Long live Bazball!<\/p>\n \u2018My arse we\u2019ve f***ing over-prepared!\u2019: England great Matthew Hoggard joins The Follow On Podcast to discuss all the fallout from the second Ashes Test. Listen below<\/p>\n English Cricketers Will Jacks, Harry Brook and Gus Atkinson on Hastings street in Noosa on Tuesday. Picture Lachie MillardSource: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n THE LAST RITES<\/p>\n Former England bowler and long-time BBC broadcaster Jonathan Agnew delivered the diagnosis not too long after Australia had claimed its second straight eight wicket win on Sunday night.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Bazball is unsustainable. It did its job in the first year (by) picking up some broken players and got them enjoying cricket again (and) winning games,\u201d he said on Test Match Special.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople loved watching it. It was great entertainment. But you can\u2019t play one-dimensional Test cricket and it is now at the crunch. I think Bazball is dead and we are going to see something different.\u201d<\/p>\n England’s Ben Stokes (R) lays on the ground after being struck in the midriff on day four of the second Ashes cricket Test match between Australia and England at The Gabba in Brisbane on December 7, 2025. (Photo by Patrick HAMILTON \/ AFP)Source: AFP<\/p>\n Journalist Andrew Miller, who coined the phrase back in the heady days of 2022 when the Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes led team began playing devil may care cricket with inspired results, offered a eulogy when the sun rose again on Monday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ashes are not yet over, but Bazball most emphatically is. It died, to all intents and purposes, with Ben Stokes\u2019 shockingly frank admission after another crushing defeat, that his team of mindset-driven genre-benders have been found wanting in the heat of a battle that their entire ethos had been geared towards,\u201d he wrote for ESPN.<\/p>\n \u201cSpecifically, it received its terminal diagnosis under the floodlights on the third evening at the Gabba. England\u2019s display up to that point had been deeply flawed, not unlike so many other Tests of the Bazball era, but this abject passage of play – six wickets in a session, when the daylight resumption promised a flat deck and rich rewards for any batter who could apply themselves – was its point of no return.<\/p>\n \u201cTheologists have spent thousands of years examining belief systems, watching their rise and fall, and who rightly knows what gives some concepts more stickability than others. England don\u2019t even acknowledge that their curious but compelling cult is actually a thing, let alone that it has a universally recognised name. <\/p>\n \u201cBut fundamentally, if you believe that there is belief within a system, then there is belief. Cogito Bazball sum, as it were. Right now, there is no sense that England believes in their methods any more. Ergo, the entire philosophy crumbles, or worse. A fiery demise always seemed a plausible endgame.\u201d <\/p>\n ‘Trained too much’ – McCullum | 00:43<\/p>\n DO AS I SAY BUT NOT AS I DO<\/p>\n It is the contradictions within the system that has exposed it as a sham, former England bowler Matthew Hoggard said. And he pointed to a classic example on Sunday.<\/p>\n As the walls burned down around England, or more to the point, the top order kept throwing their wickets away, Stokes reversed course with both his batting and also his messaging afterwards, as noted by Agnew and many others.<\/p>\n Where the majority of England\u2019s batting order continued to attack and paid the price for flighty strokes, with Joe Root the obvious exception in the first innings, Stokes defended. <\/p>\n The English skipper, in partnership with all-rounder Will Jacks, batted with great and treated balls on merit. The run rate slowed considerably, with his 50 his second slowest on record. It was clear he had put a price on his wicket.<\/p>\n This was the Stokes from Headingley in 2019. The hero who won his side a famous victory with his obstinance. Later he said there was no room for weak men in his dressing room. Mental toughness was needed.<\/p>\n Stokes was setting an example, but Hoggard pondered whether it would have added to the confusion, with it a case of it being OK for the captain to practice but not his underlings.<\/p>\n Starc notches up his half-century | 00:26<\/p>\n When chatting to Fox Cricket\u2019s podcast The Follow On prior to the series, Hoggard was concerned that England\u2019s batters would betray the effectiveness of their bowlers by not giving them enough time to rest. <\/p>\n It was, he said, a massive flaw. And it has come to pass, with England skittled quickly in Perth and unable to bat longer than 70 overs at a time in Brisbane. <\/p>\n \u201cYou saw him in the first two Test matches just saying basically \u2018Shut up. We know what we\u2019re doing\u2019\u201d, Hoggard told The Follow On.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, after this Test match, do you really know what you\u2019re doing? Yes, it hurts. But Bazball? He went out and scored \u2026 50 of 150 balls, so he went out and gutted it out. But aren\u2019t you contradicting yourself? <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve been saying for the last four years that the way to win Test matches is to go out and play positive, attacking cricket. You\u2019ve been told from ball one that\u2019s not how to win games of Test cricket, but you\u2019ve backed it, you\u2019ve backed it, you\u2019ve backed it, you\u2019ve backed it. <\/p>\n \u201cAre you now two deep games deep into an Ashes series (sensing) maybe it\u2019s not the right philosophy and you have to soak up pressure? That you have to earn the right to go out and put pressure on the Australians?\u201d<\/p>\n Hoggard, who is among many to note that Shoaib Bashir has been overlooked for the first two Tests after being groomed for this series, said an inability to understand match situations and the benefits of patience was costly.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got five days to play with. We didn\u2019t play for three of the game days in the first Test match. We got a full day off from the last Test match. So it\u2019s not the fact that we\u2019re running out of time,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can bat deep. You can say, \u2018Right then, let\u2019s build partnerships.\u2019 And what partnerships do is they demoralise the fielding side. They lose their intensity. The bowlers then think, \u2018How are we going to get a wicket?\u2019 \u2026 and that\u2019s when you start winning as a batter. That\u2019s when the runs start coming freely. <\/p>\n \u201cAustralia have been putting on partnerships and scoring freely because we haven\u2019t stuck to our plans properly.\u201d<\/p>\n BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA – DECEMBER 07: Ben Stokes of England talks to Jofra Archer of England during day four of the Second 2025\/26 Ashes Series Test Match between Australia and England at The Gabba on December 07, 2025 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n THE OPTICS ARE OFF<\/p>\n What irks former players including Fox Cricket expert analyst Michael Vaughan and Hoggard, who featured alongside his former captain in their side\u2019s famous 2005 series triumph at home, is the lack of accountability.<\/p>\n Marcus Trescothick, who performed well in that series 20 years ago, had the misfortune of having to front the press after the disastrous session on Saturday night, with the English assistant coach scarcely convincing when addressing a disastrous evening.<\/p>\n A night later McCullum offered critics a free swing when claiming they had overtrained. And then they headed to Noosa to bask in the sunshine and bathe in the warm water.<\/p>\n Former England captain Nasser Hussain knows what it is like to make a mistake at the Gabba, having infamously won the toss and elected to bowl back in 2002. But he is stunned by the follow up.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t understand England\u2019s schedule for the week ahead. They will be going into the third Test without playing a single warm-up game against Australian opposition, and that is beyond me,\u201d he wrote in The Athletic.<\/p>\n A warm-up game against the English Lions and the refusal to send any of the primary squad to compete against the Prime Minister\u2019s XI has drawn criticism as well. Hoggard said bowlers cannot prepare adequately in the nets. Vaughan concurs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been a no-consequence environment for too long,\u201d Vaughan wrote in The Telegraph. <\/p>\n \u201cThe team are told how good they are, and backed constantly, whether they play well or not. English cricket is reaping what it has sown.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTraining and not playing is just another example of a no-consequence environment. You never know if you are out or not in the nets, and you face another ball anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ashes: Test 2, Day Four Highlights | 15:42<\/p>\n