Bethell and Brook, not more Bazball, are chastened England’s best hope for forgiveness

Welcome to Bazball 3.0, which on first impression sounds remarkably like the previous two versions. In his first communique since returning to the UK this week, Brendon McCullum, England’s head coach, talked about “finessing and up-skilling”, reiterating his belief in “positive and smart cricket.” He also said “we will be brave when we need to be and smart when we need to be,” implying the two are mutually exclusive.

Every Test from here is not only an examination of McCullum and his captain Ben Stokes’s suitability, but of whether they’re really sorry for what they’ve done, whether they’ve really changed. CS Lewis called repentance “a kind of death” which requires “unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will”, and maybe this is what McCullum has been doing for the past three months, eschewing rain delays in Worcester for hard truths and ego dissolution. But given the infeasibility of that, any faint hope McCullum has of re-establishing trust with the wider English public appears to depend on Jacob Bethell and Harry Brook.

Of course, supposed progress has been made elsewhere. There’s now a chef, midnight Maccies off the menu. A County Insight Group has been formed, even if it is unclear whether McCullum ever plans on speaking to them. There is - imagine this - a coach whose entire job is dedicated to catching the ball. But these are floor-raisers, fresh safety nets and appeasing tactics, when what will really heal the broken bonds is joy. People will forgive almost anything if they are having a good time. And perhaps no players in English cricket do joy quite like Bethell and Brook.

Bethell’s last international innings in each format was the 154 off 265 balls in Sydney, 65 off 72 against Sri Lanka in an ODI, and 105 off 48 against India in the T20 World Cup semi-final at the Wankhede, a snorting assault of bombast and god-tier skill in which the next-highest score by an English bat was 35. This is the latest quirk in perhaps the weirdest early career ever, the boy who was so good at cricket he never actually played it. Before his Test debut in New Zealand 18 months ago, he had started just 20 first-class matches - that figure is now 28, six of which were Tests and one for the Lions. In 2024, his last full County Championship season, he averaged 31, but was also 20 years-old. 

Bethell seems to have this unique ability to be everything to everyone - modernist and traditionalist, bleached hair and high elbow, prodigy and leader - which can unite English cricket’s opposing poles, underpin a viable future, light the way. He increasingly looks like the logical long-term replacement for Stokes, already England’s youngest-ever white-ball captain. And yet he has only played one home Test, the decider against India last summer, in which he accumulated 11 runs across two innings batting at No 6. His majestic Sydney century - at a strike rate of 58! - unfurled in the dead of the English night in a meaningless match when patience was long since spent, so this summer is his first real unveiling to the masses, a first real chance to fall in love.

For Brook, the question is whether we can relight the spark, whether the traditional Test base can forgive him for Wellington and Perth and Adelaide. Really this will only come through runs, through the fact there is no English cricketer more fun to watch at his mind-bending best, a man too talented for his own good, who can make this look too simple. 

One obvious summer sub-plot will be the clamour for James Rew, who will replace Bethell if his minor finger injury picked up in the Indian Premier League keeps him out of the first Test. Forged in the Proper Pathways, a product of April greentops in Canterbury and Chester-le-Street, Rew is somehow considered the adult in the room, an uncapped 22 year-old the face of hard-nosed sanity just because we haven’t yet seen him do something stupid. 

Talking to ESPN CricInfo last December, he said: “Once I get in, trying to make it really hard for them to get me out. I’m not necessarily as destructive as a lot of modern-day players, but I like to try to keep the scoreboard moving along and just make it really hard for the opposition to get me out once I’m in.” Oh James, tell me more. Tell me how you were brought up on Alastair Cook and suffering. 

Which brings us round to perhaps the key question: will this summer just descend into a protracted and painful break-up with McCullum and Stokes, chasing an impossible high we can never recapture? Any talk of Bazball 3.0 is obviously just a rebranding job, playing for time by painting your Ferrari a faecal brown. New Zealand and Pakistan are both excellent teams who England should beat, but even one series defeat will probably be enough to force the two Richards (Thompson, England and Wales Cricket Board chair, and Gould, CEO) into a decision they clearly do not want to make, even if only because no-one has any idea where to go next. Yet for all the focus on the captain and head coach, on process and fielding coaches and the inevitable rotating cast of openers, maybe the future of English cricket hinges on Brook and Bethell.

Photograph by Gareth Copley/Getty Images