England have been on the attack with batsmen like Harry Brook since Brandon McCallum and Ben Stock took over team. Photo: Getty Images/Stu Forster
What kept England alive when the mournful evening drizzle fell over the Lord was the excitement of the chase. Even though the scorecard paints the saddest picture of Australia 221 running clean and subjecting Baseball to a slow death, Brandon McCallum's 12 months as head coach has shown that neither he nor his players understand that the case is lost. As challenging as the goal Pat Cummins could still set, it's in the psychology of this team that no goal is too far away for them to reach.
A draw? Away thought. Ben Stokes has repeatedly said that he is not interested in playing for parity. And so, however improbable total Australia leaves its tedious, aging homeland to pursue, England will not waver in their conviction that they can hunt it down.
Absurd, you might think. What possible reason could they have for harboring such a delusion other than the curse of arrogance? Lord's highest successful run is 344, achieved 39 years ago by the West Indies. There is little evidence that this can be surpassed soon, judging by the last three days of testing.
Except that the Stokes side rarely heeded the lessons of history. As an illustration, let's take last summer's postponed fifth Test against India in Edgbaston. India scored exactly the same first inning score of 416 as Australia, while England barely made it to 284. After adding 245, they imagined 378 would be ample defensive advantage, and yet their overcharged adversaries — promoted for centuries for Joe Root and Johnny Bairstow — wiped him out for losing just three wickets. In one fell swoop, all accepted norms were devalued.
Last summer, Joe Root and Johnny Bairstow led England in a famous run chase against India — it is hoped that history will repeat itself. Photo: AFP/Ian Kington
This time the circumstances are very different. In Birmingham last July, India reluctantly passed a one-off test after a grueling season in the Indian Premier League, where Jasprit Bumra replaced Rohit Sharma as captain. Now England is rushing headlong into the Australian hurricane in full force. The prospect of their imitation of the feat is based not so much on a sober judgment as on blind faith. But what do they have left after this severe challenge to their philosophy of attacking in any situation without any hope?
A half-full glass of England thinking will make them feel that, despite public pessimism, the conditions for the fourth inning are in their favor. Prediction is correct, Australia is without Nathan Lyon and the Bazballers' top players are swinging their bats as militantly as Joe DiMaggio. To dare is to do: that is their ethos, reflecting the motto of Tottenham Hotspur, whose new manager, Ange Postekoglou, is Lord's guest of honor. Things can go wrong, but these players will stop at nothing to protect the principles they have forged.
At one time you may have thought that this type of exhaustion foreshadowed the doom of England. But their love of theatrics forbids it. Either way, the Baseball Doctrine will unleash more drama before the outcome is known. Whether it will be exhilarating or demoralizing, only the players can control.
To the first criticism of England's approach to short serves, coach Jeetan Patel replied: “I'm not going to get into this argument. Nobody said it was reckless against New Zealand, nobody said it was reckless when Joe Root played in reverse. We tried to reduce their length and number of points.”
This weekend promises to be the defining one for this defiant rhetoric. Aside from the encouraging messages Stokes sends to his bowlers, there's the unmistakable sound of knife sharpening. If England falls to a 2-0 deficit, the Bazball bubble will deflate faster than a Barmy Army beach ball. The way of thinking will be branded as reckless, frivolous and hopelessly naive. How did they even calculate that wild hooks would work against the #1 test team in the world? It is these all-knowing retrospectives that they will desperately try to prevent. For they must support not only the series, but also their whole creed about how the game should be played.
England's lucky catch is one of the reasons they confront her on the fourth day. Photo: Getty Images/Stu Forster
Cummins's natural prudence is such that he will want to set a minimum of 400 for England, for no more than four sessions. At first glance, this sounds ridiculous. Lord's hasn't seen anything like it since 1984, when Gordon Greenidge's two hundred led the West Indies to a nine-wicket victory over David Gower's team.
But the feature of last year has been the equalizer. implausible sentences have a semblance of logic. They would rather give up than push and score for a draw. So their only option is to keep throwing punches, to keep sticking to Stokes' insistence that they have to be willing to lose in order to win. It may seem like a sure path to self-immolation, but England has gone too far down this path to turn back.
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