Former New Zealand player Scott Styris believes that the England Test team are still in trouble with some issues despite the success they had in the first four games of the Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum era as well. The stokes-led side was thrashed by South Africa by an innings and 12 runs in the first Test at Lord’s recently. The two sides will take on each other in the second Test of the three-match series at Old Trafford in Manchester from Thursday, August 25 as well.
During an interaction on the Sports 18 show Sports Over the Top, Scott Styris said: “There are some real issues for that English side still. Just because they did well against New Zealand, I don’t think it’s papered over all their cracks. This (South Africa) is the team with arguably the quickest bowling lineup in world cricket and some of the English players don’t do as well against that sort of pace.”
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He continued: “Joe Root, we know, holds all the cards for this English team, when he fails they don’t do very well. When he plays well, they have a huge degree of success. So I think it just simply is that South Africa were able to dismiss him twice cheaply. They put real pressure on everybody else. Bairstow is one of those players who I was talking about, who doesn’t do well with deliveries over 140 kph. We know South Africa has that with almost every fast bowler they have got in this Test match.”
Meanwhile, Scott Styris has also stated that ‘Bazball’ does not imply that almost every ball needs to be hit for a boundary. He also added that an overly aggressive batting approach is always going to backfire as well.
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“I think you have got to understand exactly what Bazball is. I don’t think Brendon McCullum is trying to tell his players to go out there and just take them on and try and hit fours and sixes almost every delivery. It’s all about empowering the players to make good decisions when they are out there and to back them one-hundred percent. If they are going to go out there and try and blast it to all parts of the ground, I think it is destined to fail,” Scott Styris concluded.
