Bazball parallels to football: Like Jurgen Klopp did, Brendon McCullum’s England play heavy metal cricket, it deserves its place in history

In cricket, eleven different men could play in eleven different ways and win a game in eleven different manners, unbound by a common playing theme, style or structure. Football, though played by eleven men and devouring massive real estate, contrarily to cricket, is bound by structures, styles, and philosophies. Thus, cricket has not had the equivalent of Catenaccio, Total Football, or Tiki Taka or Gegenpressing.

The closest a bunch of eleven cricketers have conformed to a uniform way of playing or embodying the same spirit as the others in the team, is Bazball, the radical code of Brendon McCullum’s England Test team.

In full flow, it’s thrilling to watch. Batsmen attack from the first ball; bowlers bound out off their blocks; fielders are often uniquely stationed, no condition fazes them; no opposition daunts them. The aggression is relentless, similar to Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund gegenpressers, who pressed and probed the adversaries to submission. It was heavy metal football, just as McCullum’s England blast heavy metal cricket. Loud and beautiful, bold and audacious. The Klopp-ball press began with the forwards, just as Bazball begins with the openers, and flows down seamlessly. Each of those eleven men, though deputed with different roles and operating in different positions, is defined by the overriding duty to stick to their method and style.

Players are picked to cater to the system. Ben Duckett was surprisingly recalled; the inconsistency Zak Crawley was offered a new lease of life, and he is in many ways their pulse. Duckett is not your conventional opener, just like Roberto Firmino was not a conventional No 9. But that’s how it worked. Klopp picked full-backs that offered attacking vim rather than