England red-ball captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum will be remembered as the combination that changed how we play and think about Test match cricket, according to former England skipper Michael Vaughan. Nasser Hussain, another former England captain, said that it was amazing to see what could happen when the team management removes the “fear of failure” from players’ minds. Vaughan even said that Pat Cummins and his Australia team will be having “sleepless nights” after England scored 500-plus in just 75 overs on the first day of the Rawalpindi Test against Pakistan.
“We have to be honest about what England are doing. They are trying to change Test cricket and, eight games in, it is going pretty well. It’s not like they’ve done it once and then struggled for three games. They had one blip but otherwise it’s been consistently excellent,” Vaughan wrote in The Telegraph.
“It is still early days of course, but I expect England to continue this way, and I think we will be talking about this period in years to come. We will look back on it and see Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum being the dual combination that changed Test match cricket: the way it is played, and the way we think about it.
“I’ve not known a captain in my time, watching or playing the game, to have had such an impact on a team. Look at where the England team were before. One win in 17, thrashed in Australia playing cricket completely opposite to this.”
Vaughan said that even though the Rawalpindi pitch was flat, England have to be commended for scoring at a fast tempo without resorting to slogs. According to Vaughan, England’s approach had brought risk-taking into Test cricket, as opposed to the risk-averse traditional way of playing the five-day game.
“This was an incredibly flat pitch and an inexperienced Pakistan bowling attack. But generally Pakistan are the best team in the world at bowling on flat wickets, taking the 22 yards out of the equation. England were just too much. It was not reckless, it was good, strong cricket shots,” Vaughan wrote.
“Watch them play these shots. They are what we would have considered risky in my era. They are not risky to them, because they are so conditioned to it from white-ball cricket: paddles, dancing down, reverse sweeps. They are an every-day action these players do. They have trained their brains and bodies to do it again and again. And it’s a sensible way! It sounds mad to say that scoring at close to seven an over isn’t complete bonkers. But these players, with their skillsets – it’s not outrageous. They are brought up to do it.
“It is all about mindset and language. Kids coming through these days don’t believe that if a bowler is bowling well you can’t score. They don’t respond to the language I grew up with about getting bowlers into their second, third, fourth spells, then capitalising. They think about how you can take them on. This is the first team to take that mindset into Test cricket, and openly encourage what we consider risk-taking. It is what will help the modern player flourish.”
