The Indian cricket team made a great comeback in the 5-match test series against England as they won the second test match by 106 runs and leveled the series by 1-1.
Earlier, England had won the first test match which was played at Hyderabad by 28 runs but the Indian team lifted up their game and emerged victorious in the second test match that was played at Dr. Y.S. Rajashekar Reddy ACA-VDCA International Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam.
While Yashasvi Jaiswal (209 runs) played a superb knock and helped his team in scoring 396 runs in the first innings, it was Shubman Gill’s brilliant knock of 104 runs which made it possible for the Indian side to put up a total of 255 runs on the scoreboard in the second innings and hence, India gave a target of 399 runs to the England squad to win the match.
The English batting line-up wasn’t able to make much impact in this match as they could manage only 253 in the first innings and 292 in the second innings despite few batters getting good start in both the innings. The Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah was adjudged as the Player of the Match as he took 9 wickets (6 wickets in the first innings and 3 wickets in the second innings).
Since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes have taken over as the coach and the captain, respectively, the England cricket team has adopted an aggressive approach which has been named as Bazball and the English team has achieved success in the majority of the test series that it has played since then.
But many former England cricketers slammed both the coach and the skipper after England lost the second test match. The former England cricketer Geoffrey Boycott was also very upset with the defeat and criticized the coach-captain duo for their Bazball approach.
Geoffrey Boycott wrote in a column for a news daily that the England team should play as per the situation rather than following the Bazball approach blindly.
He further writes that Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes are always thinking of attack, attack and attack and it is just like saying that if they can’t win, they will prefer glorious failure but in reality, there is no glory in defeat or failure.
As per Geoffrey Boycott, Bazball is quite entertaining when it works well but once a team starts believing in ideal over substance then it means the team has completely lost the plot and the England team lost the match due to Bazball. He clearly wrote that Bazball was a failure in the second test match.
The former England cricketer was also quite upset with Joe Root who could score only 16 runs in the second innings. Geoffrey wrote that scoring at the run rate of 5 is entertaining but many batters also lose their wickets despite getting good starts. He wrote that the best way to successfully chase 400 runs is that one batter plays a century knock but scoring quickly and going after good bowler is always risky and Joe Root lost his wicket due to Bazball.
Geoffrey further wrote that as soon as Joe Root came to bat, he stared coming down the pitch in order to play aerial shots and he got out at 16. He further wrote that usually England’s best technical batter is a very busy man who scores at a good run rate but asking him to go after bowling took him out of his comfort zone.
The third test match will be played from 15 Feb at Rajkot and the England team has chosen to go to Abu Dhabi to utilize this gap.