“All sound and fury signifying nothing”.
The Macbeth-inspired quote was aptly left in the Facebook comments of a BBC Test Match Special post, detailing the third Test death rattle of England’s abominable Ashes campaign.
The faces of Bazball: England’s Harry Brook Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum. Credit: Aresna Villanueva
With a trio of England’s most iconic exports – Shakespeare, public broadcasting, and cricketing capitulations – a neat bow is tied on the 11 days required for the settling of a series hyped like no other, even with England’s admirable day five fight in Adelaide.
For four years, the Bazball era has built to this – “the biggest series of all our lives” as Brendon McCullum said in September. In a little more than half an Antipodean tour, the question now, after threatening to jag a fourth-innings miracle, is what might have been, with a little less heroic hubris.
Bazball without brains from the outset Call it exposition (a last nod to Shakespeare), if you must. Amid all manner of hype and hyperbole, England touched down in Perth, with their vaunted Bazballing ways and accompanying vows to bat with abandon.
But for all the cushioning England’s recent years of flat decks and smaller grounds offer to their helter-skelter batting, Australian venues do not. The tourists’ commanding start with the ball in Perth was frittered away spectacularly with the bat.
Per CricViz, opener Ben Duckett began the first Test with an astounding record of leaving only 54 of the 2252 deliveries – or just 2.39 per cent – he has faced in his 34 Tests under McCullum.
A match-winner on his day, Duckett has fallen victim to a
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