Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum's Test cricket revolution is double-edged sword

“Play without fear” might just be the easiest cliche to throw around in sport at the elite level.

The reality is that to compete on the very highest stage in front of millions of people with huge consequences riding on whether you win or lose means that playing without the slightest caution is actually incredibly difficult to do.

The absolute best of the best are just able to handle this sort of pressure far better than others. However, watching the England cricket Test team in action against New Zealand in their recent Test series was truly breath-taking stuff at times.

Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes have only been in charge for a relatively short period but their ability to shift the ‘fear factor’ within the team has been really noticeable. Take note though - this will be a double edged sword. It looked like the team were playing with the freedom of not worrying about consequences which is easy to say but really difficult to do in practise. This wasn’t just highlighted in them winning but more in the style in which they won.

I grew up thinking Test cricket was a bit boring because the pace of it was so slow; and the thing is it was slow and still can be slow nowadays. But watching Jonny Bairstow, in particular, in that series was incredible. He was like a kid batting without any worry that his ‘risks’ wouldn’t pay off. We need to remember that there were plenty of calls for Bairstow not to be in this Test side because he came straight back to it from the Indian Premier League with little preparation time. I presume that Bairstow wouldn’t have been immune to hearing some of this criticism; so, for McCullum and Stokes to create an atmosphere around him that meant he could literally ‘play without fear’ is impressive.

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