Risk-free batting, no reverse scooping of Bumrah, this was Bazball 2.0

About 9.30 on Tuesday evening, three hours after Jamie Smith’s flick for six had secured a remarkable five-wicket win in the first Test against India, England’s players finally left the Headingley dressing room.

They were still buzzing after pulling off the 10th-highest chase in 149 years of Test cricket, but the mood was calm, the atmosphere understated, and the post-match debrief, led as ever by captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum, celebrated a team effort.

The headlines had gone to Ben Duckett for his superlative 149, and to a lesser extent to Zak Crawley, whose careful 65 contributed to an opening stand of 188 that took a huge chunk out of England’s pursuit of an imposing 371.

But even those who contributed least on paper had played their part: Chris Woakes scored a crucial 38 in the first innings to drag England within six of India’s 471, while Shoaib Bashir’s removal of Rishabh Pant on the fourth afternoon paved the way for the tourists’ second collapse of the game.

Back at the Marriott Hotel in Leeds city centre, a 15-minute drive from the ground, most of the England players chilled at the bar, though a couple ventured out. As a dressing-room insider put it: ‘It was controlled and composed — a bit like the match itself.’ Even off the field, it felt like Bazball 2.0.

There was no fraternising with the dispirited Indians: drinks with the opposition wait until the end of the series, and there are four matches still to come. England were determined not to raise a glass too early. One player told Mail Sport on Wednesday that the evening had been a ‘few beers, then back to reality today’.

Stokes, too, cut a relaxed figure after securing his 21st victory in 34 games in charge, taking his win percentage to 61.76, above WG Grace and Douglas Jardine, and into pole position among those to captain England in at least eight Tests.

He had not been himself for much of the fourth day, when Pant and KL Rahul took their fourth-wicket partnership to an apparently match-winning 195. Stokes was curiously defensive, emptying the slip cordon and allowing Pant to get away with two thin edges off Josh Tongue.

The England captain later denied he had lost any sleep over his decision to insert India under cloudless skies on the first morning. But he seemed so listless in the field on Monday that thoughts drifted to the autumn tour of Pakistan, where his unusual passivity let Saud Shakeel carve out a series-winning knock in Rawalpindi.

Back then, other factors weighed heavily on Stokes’s shoulders. Masked burglars had broken into his family home in Castle Eden, while his desperation to get back on the pitch after missing four Tests with hamstring trouble had, by his own admission, distracted him from the needs of the team.

On the final morning in Leeds, though, Stokes was said to be back to his ebullient self, the undisputed figurehead of a team who know that their legacy will be determined by 10 Tests against India and Australia, but refuse to be burdened by the prospect.

‘It’s a good job Test cricket is played over five days,’ said Stokes later, in response to a question about the toss. He wasn’t gloating — just stating a fact.

This is a team who feel increasingly comfortable in their own skin. As the post-match interviews took place on the outfield, Duckett spotted his 11-month-old daughter, Margot, and spoke like a doting dad rather than a Test star who had just made the sixth-highest fourth-innings score in English history.

‘I want to give her a cuddle,’ said the opener. ‘I’ve definitely realised there’s more to life.’

Gone are the days when he was throwing a retaliatory pint over Jimmy Anderson, or throwing up on a plane over the head coach Trevor Bayliss. And Duckett’s growing maturity has matched the team’s evolution: even while scoring at 4.55 an over in the chase, England were not frenetic, as they have been previously. It was high-class and risk-free — a template, perhaps, for a new era.

Back in March, Duckett told Mail Sport that Jasprit Bumrah, while a magnificent bowler, would offer no surprises after he had faced him during the five-match series in India in early 2024. His quotes were misinterpreted by others, and the ensuing pile-on forced him to close his X account.

But Headingley backed up his assessment. ‘I’m learning it a bit quicker,’ he said. ‘It’s potentially a bit of maturity kicking in, realising that whenever he came on it was going to be a short, sharp burst. Trying to see him off, and not necessarily playing any big shots, and knowing it would get easier. It’s taking the ego out of things.’

Crawley, meanwhile, revealed that he and his opening partner had coped with the size of their task by playing a simple mind game: ‘Me and Ducky said, “It’s day one today”. Looking at the total can make you play a little bit negatively at times, but it comes down quite quickly.’

Previous iterations of the Bazball team might have attacked Bumrah, but Crawley saw off the seamer so assiduously that his 111-ball half-century was the slowest of his Test career.

‘We knew it was a fast-scoring ground,’ he said. ‘We knew we could always catch up, so we started off quite slowly and wanted to see what the pitch was doing. Our mindset in that changing room is very calm.’

The Bazball era got going three years ago in the second Test against New Zealand at Trent Bridge with a flurry of sixes by Jonny Bairstow — seven of them in a 92-ball 136, to go with four by Stokes himself. But until Smith launched Ravindra Jadeja twice over the ropes in what proved the final over of this Test, England’s Headingley chase included only one six — a miraculous reverse sweep by Duckett off Jadeja.

Some of the criticism that has come England’s way, especially during the first two Tests against Australia in 2023, and the 4–1 defeat by India a few months later, was over the top, branding them unfairly as merry sloggers, oblivious to reality and impervious to criticism.

But Stokes had hinted at a tweaked approach before this game, saying his team had to ‘adapt better when we’re up against the wall’ and had let themselves down at times ‘when we have been behind the game’.

And he was true to his word. On the second morning, India were 430 for three. They were 333 for four on the fourth afternoon. For Shubman Gill’s men, this ought to have been an unlosable Test.

For England, their recovery — twice over — offered hope of something more refined, more resilient, and possibly even more potent.