Joshua Da Silva, Shamar Joseph Trigger A Soft Spot In 'The Bazball'

Joshua Da Silva and Shamar Joseph stitched a 71-run stand vs ENG [X]

England is taking on West Indies in the second Test of the three-match series at Trent Bridge, Nottingham. The match stands at a position where England are ahead of the visitors, but Day three in the Test match brought to notice a soft spot in ‘The Bazball’.

Match situation

West Indies won the toss and invited England to bat first in the match. The home team put on a mammoth total of 416 runs in the first innings before being bundled out in the 89th over. Ollie Pope starred with the bat with a brilliant 121 off 167 deliveries. Ben Duckett (71 off 59) and Ben Stokes (69 off 104) also scored half-centuries and played a significant role in taking England to the big total.

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West Indies built their innings steadily as Kavem Hodge played the role of a consolidator, scoring 120 runs off 171 balls. But after the dismissal of Hodge, they faced a mini-collapse where they lost four wickets for 31 runs, and it looked like West Indies would concede a lead to England. 

However, Joshua Da Silva (82 off 122) and Shamar Joseph (33 off 27) gave England a test of their own medicine, stitching a 71-run partnership and giving the visitors a 41-run lead.

Although England has already scored 248/3 in their second innings and holds an advantage in the match, the West Indies' last-wicket partnership brought to the forefront a long-standing weakness of England.

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England and their troubles with the 10th wicket

The English bowling has time and again proved to be ineffective when it comes to breaking the last-wicket partnership of the opposition cheaply. Let us take a look at the average runs conceded by the teams for the last wicket from 2017-2022 (before McCullum took over as the coach of England)

These numbers show that England were the third highest (among the major Test-playing nations) in terms of the average runs conceded for the last wicket before the Bazball era. 

Now, let us look at the numbers from McCullum’s time as the coach.

As far as the rank is concerned, there is a slight improvement for England under McCullum. However, the numbers show us that there has been a fractional increase in the runs that they have conceded on an average to the last wicket partnership.

But beyond the stats, the noticeable factor is the consistency of the English team in this list within the top four. With England moving onto an aggressive brand of cricket in the longest format, one thing is evident: their defensive mentality when it comes to taking the last wicket (where they try to hunt down the tail-ender rather than looking to take the wicket in general) has not changed.

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