“BazBawl”. “Sitting Duck”. “Average Joe”. Here in Perth, the West Australian newspaper had some early fun at the expense of England’s highest-profile cricketers. Ben Stokes, previously seen in the same pages during the 2023 Ashes sporting nappies and a dummy, was tagged as England’s “Cocky Captain Complainer”, while Joe Root, only 13,543 runs into his Test career, was described as a “pretender” and a “dud” in Australian conditions.
Given the usual schedule, it has normally been left to the Brisbane Courier Mail, who had the “medium-paced phantom menace” Stuart Broad in its sights relentlessly in 2013-14, to lead the charge, but Perth hosting the opening Test this time has allowed the local tabloid to take first aim. Bang, bang, bang it went as the staggered arrival of England’s players offered fruitful opportunity.
On Monday it was the turn of The Australian to raise an eyebrow, specifically at Brendon McCullum’s decision to give his players two days off after the Lilac Hill warm-up. “Perhaps the English are freewheeling enough to train only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, like a good old pub team,” it said, before noting — wryly, given the injuries to Josh Hazlewood and Sean Abbott — that the upside to “taking the piss” and not training is that no-one can get seriously injured.
Stokes, the captain, and others being targeted by the media is nothing new in an Ashes series
PHILIP BROWN/GETTY IMAGES
In one sense, this is harmless knockabout stuff. All good fun. All part of the show. There hasn’t been an England touring party, an England captain or an England player who has not been on the receiving end at some stage from the Australian press or public. When Mike Denness, captain of the 1974-75 tour, received an envelope addressed to “Mike Denness, Cricketer”, the letter inside added the kicker: “If this reaches you, then the postman thinks more of you than I do.” Neatly done.
And, of course, our own tabloids and supporters have had their share of fun over the years. When Mark Taylor could not score a run before the start of the 1997 series, one newspaper sent a reporter to gift him a giant, metre-wide bat. Taylor promptly returned to form. Mitchell Johnson, the tearaway paceman, has openly spoken about he was affected by the Barmy Army chant of: “He bowls to the left; he bowls to the right; that Mitchell Johnson, his bowling is shite.”
Equally, when things go badly, players are well aware that the media can turn on their own side. When, on the 1994-95 tour, The Sun newspaper printed the fax number of the Queensland hotel in which the team were staying, and asked their readers to send their thoughts to the then England coach, Keith Fletcher, the result was an upsetting torrent of abuse shoved under his hotel door for his wife to see. In 2010-11, the Australian media turned viciously on Ricky Ponting and his team.
The Australian media turned on Ponting’s team after England’s 3-1 series win down under in 2010-11
GARETH COPLEY/PA
All that said, there is something about this particular England team, and this particular philosophy — if “Bazball” can be so termed — that seems to wind Australians up to fever pitch and get under their skin. Criticisms of Stokes’s team have, I sense, carried a harder edge than usual, from respected opinion-makers as well as from those who can be safely ignored. After the end of the Old Trafford Test against India last summer, when England’s players carried on a bit, the reaction in Australia was revealingly harsh: “Babbling Brook and the Bazball boys will be eminently hateable this summer” ran one headline.
Why is this? Johnson hinted at a partial explanation in my interview with him over the weekend: that Australia feel, through the likes of Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist initially, that they have been “Bazballing” for years. England, in this regard, are Johnny-come-latelys. True enough. But in the past three years, England have stolen Australia’s clothes, scoring at one run per over quicker (4.5 to 3.5). When Pat Cummins began the Ashes of 2023 with sweepers on the boundary, and then put everyone on the rope under assault at Old Trafford, it felt like the historical roles had been well and truly reversed.
Green is the only player in the Australia squad under the age of 30
PAUL KANE/GETTY IMAGES
Australians have always viewed English cricket as staid and conservative, but the old enemy is not playing up to the stereotype. Indeed, in selection, the roles are reversed and it is England who are taking chances, plucking youngsters like Jacob Bethell out of domestic cricket on a whim.
Australia’s squad for this Test includes one player, Cameron Green, under 30. Hazlewood’s replacement is Michael Neser, 35 years old, with two Tests to his name; their two likely debutants are over 30. Australia took a chance on one young gun, Sam Konstas, recently and then promptly sent him back to domestic cricket to brush up his game.
Australians love a winner, and they probably look at England under McCullum and Stokes and wonder what all the fuss is about. It was not England who made the final of the World Test Championship in 2023 or 2025 and they haven’t yet beaten the two big dogs of Test cricket, India or Australia. If there is an equivalent Australian idiom for all talk and no trousers, they’d no doubt tag this England team with it.
Maybe there is a clue, too, in the West Australian takedown of Stokes which began with “Kiwi-born Stokes”. McCullum, of course, is Kiwi through and through, even if Stokes is not. McCullum never scored a Test hundred in Australia and averaged in the lowly 20s. It would not be hard to imagine an Australian captain giving an Alex Ferguson-style team-talk back in the day: “Lads, it’s New Zealand.”
Preaching about saving Test cricket; whining about the Jonny Bairstow run out at Lord’s (even though no England cricketer, to my knowledge, has raised the issue since) and — as they constantly remind us — the “moral victory” of 2023 has all added to the distaste that Australians have for Bazball.
It was almost 50 years ago that the philosopher David Stove put forward an argument for the slight, if undeniable, advantage Australia hold in this great contest, when he said: “My own belief is that it is due to a difference in attitude towards the opponent, that whereas the Australians hate the Poms, the Poms only despise the Australians.”
With the Perth Test now days away, you sense is a real desire for the Bazballers to be put in their place and taken down a peg or two. If this particular England team walk off with the Ashes that would be very hard for some here to take. The stakes are high.
First Ashes Test
England v Austraila
Optus Stadium, Perth
Starts Friday, 2.30am
TV TNT Sports