Moeen Ali: Harry Brook made a mistake. He’ll learn from it

The cool professionalism of Moeen Ali would have come in handy on this winter’s Ashes tour, the debris from which is still strewn around.

The latest instalment was England’s white ball captain Harry Brook apologising for being “clocked” by a bouncer in New Zealand before Australia’s 4-1 Ashes win.

But there is better news for Brook. His county, Yorkshire, has been strengthened by Moeen joining their T20 Blast side. “There were quite a few counties that were interested but Yorkshire for me was the right place to go,” he says. “It’s a huge, huge county. And the ground itself. I’ve loved playing a lot of my cricket there.”

In an interview with The Observer, Moeen talked about Yorkshire, Bazball, English cricket’s dearth of spinners and whether the game has a drink problem. England’s Test team imbibing in Australia was one part of a turbulent post-mortem.

Moeen, 38, is a senior league and franchise cricketer who benefits from the Blast being compressed into four weeks starting in late May. Of the modern peripatetic life he says: “You go places you never thought you’d go and play cricket. I never thought I’d be in Canada playing cricket. There are so many leagues popping up. There’s one in Malaysia, Belgium…”

At Yorkshire he joins a county that was convulsed in 2018 by a racism scandal after Azeem Rafiq made allegations of abuse and bullying. “It wasn’t mentioned at all,” Moeen says. “My cousin Kabir Ali was assistant coach for three years [between 2022-2024], so if there were things that were still happening he definitely would have known.

“But I didn’t feel I needed to ask those kind of things. It didn’t cross my mind at all.”

As a veteran of another painful Ashes tour of Australia in 2017-18, which England lost 4-0, Moeen is well qualified to judge the debunking of Bazball and the drinking that was a feature, too, in his time, when Ben Duckett was sent home from Australia for pouring a drink over Jimmy Anderson.

First, Bazball, and its obituary. “More than anything I thought technically we weren’t great. We got exposed,” he says. “Personally I don’t think Bazball is about playing shots or being ultra-aggressive. I think Bazball is more about putting pressure on bowlers when that needs to happen. Maybe we took that a bit too far. I think there are many times you need to soak it up.

“When I played Test cricket there were players who were naturally attacking but had to rein it in. I was talking about this recently to Chris Woakes. I think someone like Jonny Bairstow was the best Bazball player – his style of play. He was attacking when he needed to be. He won a lot of games, but he had the ability to soak up pressure as well. [He knew] when to go and when not to go.”

Moeen scored five Test centuries and 3,094 runs, took 204 Test wickets, won the Ashes in 2015 and played for England 298 times in all formats. His six-and-a-half hour unbeaten 108 in his second Test match, against Sri Lanka, was scored at his new home, Headingley.

His generation received a traditional technical education to complement their creativity. And he understands how hard it is now to be good across all formats without the sound foundations he sees most clearly in Indian batters.

“Nowadays people are doing so much power hitting – and hitting generally – that it affects your technique. Things like even holding the bat, or where your feet should be,” he says.

“This is why India, batting wise, are still one of the best. If you look at all their hitters, they also have good techniques.” He mentions Ian Bell as a former player who had those attributes. “We’re very lucky with Joe Root. Actually Harry Brook’s technique is generally very good.

“Technically, I think we’re lacking in world cricket. We’ve moved away from proper batting to becoming hitters.”

England’s lack of spin in Australia is another structural weakness that strikes him. “We’ve had this lull for a very long time. Since Graeme Swann we haven’t had a genuine out and out spinner. I would say I did OK for someone who wasn’t a frontline spinner.

“It’s a lack of players bowling, a lack of understanding of arm spin. We’ve been struggling for a very long time. There are games I think I played in Test cricket because there were no spinners around. You do want a Nathan Lyon in your side to win you games.

“We don’t practice enough either. When a young bowler bowls in England he bowls for an hour and he thinks he’s bowled a lot. Whereas in some countries – Sri Lanka or wherever – they bowl for three or four hours. We just don’t do that.”

He admits the summer schedule hinders young spinners: “But I also think it’s on you as an individual – how good you want to be. You’ve got to find a way.” At Worcestershire (his first county) they made him play club cricket on a Saturday “because I bowled 17 overs. For me it was a huge part of my development. You have to build yourself up as a spinner.”

And, as a Muslim, he didn’t drink, from his ringside seat on English cricket’s refuelling: “There’s a few ways of looking at it. The only reason it’s highlighted is because we lost. When we win and people drink – exactly the same thing – it’s never highlighted.

“I know Brooky [Harry Brook] made a mistake. He’s not the first guy and not the last guy to make a mistake, and I think he’ll learn from it. Sometimes people need to make mistakes, like Ben Stokes admitting to making mistakes previously. He turned out to be one of the greatest players we’ve produced.

“It’s a difficult question to answer because it’s the norm in cricket, not just England but every team I’ve played in. I’ve played in teams where after every win there’s a drinking game, a fines game. If you do that back to back I don’t know if it becomes a problem.

“I just think if you’re at the elite level and you’re playing an elite tournament or elite series it must affect you as a player, it must affect your decisions sometimes, depending obviously on how much you drink.”

His conclusion though is the same as in 2017-18, when he argued for change: “I just think personally if cricket is to change and become elite, then you do elite things and behaviours. Then in an Ashes series you either say there’s no drinking or you say, lads, you have to control it. In such a big series people are going to ask – why are you doing this, why are you doing that? It becomes an issue.”

White-ball leagues have given Moeen’s generation a lucrative final career phase but his first love predates today’s travelling circus: “There will never ever be anything like Test cricket. It’s the best format. When you do well in Test cricket, you’ve scored a hundred, or you’ve taken a five-fer to win a game for your team, it’s the greatest feeling you can have, and you know you’ve deserved it.

“I feel I could have done better in Test cricket, but I’m also very grateful I played 68 Test matches.

“When I did well in red ball cricket I always felt – I worked hard for this.”

Photograph by Steven Paston/PA Images