Bazball: a cult of bruised masculinity where you win even if you lose

“If a group that you belong to has many of the following criteria, you may have cause for concern:

The group is led by one or a few individuals, charismatic, determined, domineering.

The group tends to be totalitarian, with elaborate rituals that occupy large parts of every day.

The leader(s) claim to have a special mission in life. Frequently, that mission is messianic or apocalyptic.

The group usually presents itself as innovative and exclusive, even elitist.”

Cultic Studies Journal 1986

“It feels like we won, lads”

Baz, 2023

As a general trigger warning, this article is going to involve saying the word Bazball a lot, which some readers may find distressing. Are we close to a state of total saturation yet? To that point where Bazball becomes just another nauseatingly overplayed media strand, up there with Schofield’s vape blister or Laurence Fox baking a gay cake on TikTok and sombrely throwing it off a canal barge? Because this has been the most extraordinary breaking wave.

The word Bazball was coined in May 2022 by the Cricinfo journalist Andrew Miller, ostensibly as a joke. A quick Google search now pulls up 8,270,000 results for a word that, until that point, didn’t exist. Bazball is in Hansard (MP urges government to “Bazball” some trade deals). Since the start of April the Guardian’s website alone has published 70 articles where “Bazball” gets a mention.

It is still hard to understand how an interesting niche idea – playing Test cricket more aggressively – has managed to insert itself so insistently into the popular culture, to the extent that by now the obsession with Bazball feels far more significant than anything the word itself might actually describe. Why has this happened? And what does it mean?

Mike