The Sunday Stat: In the first 18 Tests of Ben Stokes’s full-time captaincy, to the end of the 2023 Ashes, England scored 45% faster than their opposition. Since then, beginning with the series in India in 2024, they have scored 18% faster overall.
One of the side-effects of the elongated cricketless hiatuses built into modern tour schedules is the vast chasms of newstime that need to be filled with content. If Speculation On The State Of The Bazball Project could be harnessed and transformed into electricity, the world’s fossil fuels could rest easy in the knowledge that they would no longer be needed.
Statistically, the numbers show a concerning reduction in the effectiveness of Stokes’s team. The unprecedented runs-per-over advantage England had over their opponents in the first three seasons of the Stokes era has narrowed significantly. In the heady, record-shattering first 15 months, England hit 4.83 per over with the bat – 0.79 per over, faster than any team had previously scored over an 18-Test sequence, and almost 60% faster than England had scored over the previous three years (3.05). They conceded 3.33 per over with the ball in that period, during which England won 13 and lost 4 matches.
Since then, in 25 Tests, featuring 12 wins and 12 defeats, their own scoring rate has come down by almost 10%, to 4.36 – still absurdly quick – and their economy rate has risen by 11%, to 3.70, the highest rate England have ever recorded over a 25-Test sequence, and the highest by any Test team that has not had to play against Bazball-era England.
In the Ashes, for the first time in a series, Stokes’s England have been the slower scoring team (albeit with three Tests to play). England have scored at 4.15 per over, and have conceded at 4.55 per over, which is the sixth-highest scoring rate by a team in the first two Tests of a series. The top four figures are all recent England series, with the one interloper untouched by Bazballistics being Australia’s 4.67 against West Indies in 2015-16.
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Stokes’s team have always been attacking in the field, risking a higher runs per over concession in search of wickets. But their increasing lack of control with the ball has become a significant issue.
To the end of the 2023 Ashes, their worst collective economy rate in a series was 3.35; they have since conceded at least 3.49 per over.
Naturally, a significant factor in the narrowing of the run-rate gap has been the reduction in the number of matches in which England have held dominant positions. It is not entirely possible to define a clear chicken-egg timeline – has England’s runs-per-over dominance reduced because they are winning fewer games, or are they winning fewer games because their runs-per-over dominance has reduced? Perhaps the correct answer lies in a chicken omelette mix of the two.
Certainly, the bowling attack has mutated from one which contained mostly experienced bowlers capable of exerting control – Anderson (economy rate 2.65 per over from the start of the Stokes-McCullum period), Broad (3.43), Woakes (3.04), Robinson (2.86), Leach (3.37) – to one without the hundreds of wickets’ worth of Test and first-class experience, who have taken wickets at good strike rates, but conceded runs much faster (Atkinson 3.76, Carse 3.72, Tongue 4.07, Bashir 3.78). Archer, in his four recent Tests, has conceded 3.16 per over, but the other front-line seamers have been unable to provide prolonged control. England are, I think, a less flexible and multidimensional bowling side than they were in the earlier Bazball period, understandable given that they have lost the skills and wisdom of England’s two leading Test wicket-takers, plus, more recently, Woakes and Wood.
One of the many remarkable aspects of Stokes-McCullum regime has been its ability to extract outstanding performances from novice Test bowlers, often way beyond what their domestic statistics suggested was likely or even possible. The five bowlers in the squad who have made their debut since June 2022 – Potts, Tongue, Bashir, Atkinson and Carse – all began their Test careers superbly. The challenge now for the coaching staff, and the players themselves, is to reproduce the quality of those early performances, at a time when doubts and uncertainties may be growing, for a team whose batting has repeatedly and hastily failed.
Only once in England’s Test history have they fallen 2-0 behind in a Test series having batted for fewer overs than the 219.1 they have managed in their four innings in Australia.
The nature of modern Test cricket is such that the partnership between Stokes and Jacks, which at 36.4 overs was the longest by either team in the series so far, felt like an epic of endurance, but was only the joint-584th longest recorded partnership in England v Australia men’s Tests.
Excluding the Stokes-Jacks stand, they have lost wickets at a rate of one per 28 balls faced in the first two Tests. In all Tests against Australia for which ball-by-ball data is available (which is the vast majority of games), England’s tenth-wicket partnerships have averaged 27 balls per dismissal. If that statistic is not significantly altered in the next month, their small but discernible chance of pulling off their greatest Test series comeback will be flattened to absolute zero.
Photograph by Gareth Copley/Getty Images