Days after the legendary Ian Botham said he would throw something at the TV if he heard the England camp say ‘this is how we play’ about their debatable BazBall approach, batting coach Marcus Trescothick
has done just that. Speaking to the media on Saturday, a day when England were brought down to 134/6 — behind by 43 runs in the third innings — at Stumps, Trescothick declared that his team won’t change their approach.
Just like their collapse in the first Test in Perth, which gave away a pretty strong position, most England batters got out driving or pushing the ball on the up at the Gabba. While the pitch in Perth did have some demons, which might have warranted that approach, it wasn’t the case in Brisbane, where they simply needed a more mature reply to Australia’s 511 runs in the second innings, which gave them a 177-run lead.
“We’re trying to play the way that we want to play,” Trescothick said, as quoted by AFP. “And we want to try and utilise that in the best possible fashion. It doesn’t mean we always get it right of course.”
“We’re trying to apply pressure. We’re trying to put bowlers off their length and we’ve done that really well for periods of time,” he added. “In the time this team has been together it’s been tested so far, and we’ll keep working at trying to make it better. I think you’ve got to have a style of play that you sort of stick to, don’t you? We’ve built the team the way that we want to build the team and we trust in the guys that we have that we know they are good enough. We’ve been put under pressure in various phases in the last two games and of course that’s been challenging.”
England have Ben Stokes and Will Jacks, the extra batter they brought in after Perth, on the pitch. Together, they’d need a good foundation to push the score around par.
