England cricket team in action during Ashes 2023© AFP
England won a number of fans with their ‘Bazball’ approach to cricket but it was not enough against Australia as they were beaten by two wickets in the first Ashes Test in Edgbaston. Even the decision by England skipper Ben Stokes to declare the first innings towards the end of Day 1 was met with a lot of criticism. Former Pakistan cricketer Salman Butt said that it was ‘arrogant’ of England to declare the innings early and that came back to haunt them in the Edgbaston Test.
“You have to adapt according to the situation. There are no guarantees that all of your batters will score in every match just because you have batting depth. If you’re set, you have to score big. You can’t rely on others to make up for the failure. Everyone is aggressive in this England team, some are even overly-aggressive. A batsman is playing on 130, he’s set, you have 10-odd overs, you’re on 393, have a chance to add 50-60 runs more, so why did you declare?” Butt said on his official YouTube channel.
Butt also expressed his views on ‘Bazball’ and made it clear that England should not underestimate Australia at any point of the ongoing Ashes Test series.
“It didn’t make sense. You have a five-day Test. They thought they will dismiss Australia early. I think they underestimated the opponents, it was an arrogant declaration. Australia aren’t walkovers. In Pakistan, our bowlers were inexperienced. Even if it was our best bowling, even they didn’t have that much of experience in Tests. We had three debutants in bowling attack, our emphasis had been on shorter formats. On the other hand, Australia are Test champions, they prefer Test cricket. They are ready to leave IPL for Tests. You can’t take that team lightly,” he further said.
Topics mentioned in this article
