Ravichandaran Ashwin has delivered one of the sharpest critiques yet of Bazball, questioning not just England’s batting in Perth but the very limits of what modern teams are trying to pass off as acceptable risk. In a detailed breakdown on his YouTube channel, the Indian great went beyond the usual criticism and asked if recklessness has now become a lazy shield for poor decision-making.
Using England’s collapse in the first Ashes Test as the launchpad, Ashwin broadened the lens to include next-gen batters everywhere, including in India, who he feels are confusing bravado with discipline and calculation at the highest level.
Ravi Ashwin deconstructs the new era of Test cricket
He started with a stinging deconstruction of the “reckless” label that is so often used to defend dismissals in the Bazball era.
“But how reckless will reckless suffice? I am actually thinking, where will the bandwidth of the word reckless remain? If you keep putting everything into that bandwidth, how reckless can even reckless get? Because I am saying that, you know, there are many things. I don’t want to take names of players. Even in the Indian team, there will be many next-generation players who, I mean, the fielders are back on the boundary, yet they take the chance, they hit lofted shots,” analysed Ashwin.
This analysis from Ashwin skewers the idea that every failed big shot can be brushed off as “that’s just our positive intent”, and it quietly warns Indian batters that this isn’t only an England problem. For Ashwin, once fielders are stationed on the rope and you still choose the high-risk option, it stops being philosophy and starts being plain negligence.
Ashwin questions the extent of “positive intent”
Ashwin went after the collective responsibility of England’s top order in Perth, especially after their bowlers had dragged them back into the contest.
“As a batting group, how reckless can you be? Because on the first day, you were knocked out for 172, you lost five wickets in the space of 12 or 15 or maybe 20 runs. After that, your bowling attack wrestled the initiative back, gave you a 40-run lead. And your first job as a batting unit is to give your bowlers enough rest. As Rahul (Dravid) bhai always says, give your bowlers overnight rest and see how your bowlers respond. Today, they came and cleaned up the last wicket. The England bowlers, I am sure, would have wanted to put their feet up, and in no time they are back on the park looking to defend 200, which is paltry,” said Ashwin.
Ravichandran Ashwin’s point is brutally simple: Test batting is not just about strike rate or setting the tone; it is about protecting your own attack. England’s pacers had earned the right to put their feet up and attack fresh the next day. Instead, their batters’ harum-scarum approach sent them straight back out with barely 200 to defend.
In one sweep, Ashwin turns Bazball’s favourite word against it. If everything, from genius to meltdown, is defended as reckless by design, then he says, the word itself loses meaning.
