By the end of the year, England had desecrated Test cricket in the best and most literal sense imaginable - "Bazball," as everyone except the team was referring to Stokes and Brendon McCullum's new liberated approach to the ancient format, had stripped back the pomp and unleashed that inner white-ball beast.
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2022 was a year unlike any other for England’s men’s Test squad, one in which winning the T20 WC and becoming the first team to hold both white-ball world titles at the same time was probably not their greatest achievement. It began with existential agony during the Ashes and finished with an unequivocal, unprecedented victory in Pakistan. It started with a dismal record of one Test win in 17 and concluded with nine spectacular triumphs in 10. It started with Joe Root clinging to his Test captaincy because there were no viable alternatives, and it concluded with Ben Stokes being lauded as England’s best since Brearley.
Oh, and it started with vague talk of a “red-ball reset” and concluded with England adding the T20 World Cup championship to their 50-over crown from 2019 – a success that came almost as a byproduct of the tidal surge of positive vibes that washed over the national set-up. By the end of the year, England had desecrated Test cricket in the best and most literal sense imaginable – “Bazball,” as everyone except the team was referring to Stokes and Brendon McCullum’s new liberated approach to the ancient format, had stripped back the pomp and unleashed that inner white-ball beast.
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It wasn’t nearly as therapeutic for the women, regardless of the fact that it began with an equally humiliating defeat in the antipodes. Nat Sciver’s amazing century against Australia in the World Cup final brought a fitting conclusion to a gruelling winter. The squad had a cluster of young skilled stars, honed in the Hundred and ready to step, in the likes of Issy Wong, Alice Capsey, and Freya Kemp. The Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, however, arrived too soon for an enthusiastic but inexperienced team, and India proved too powerful. With Heather Knight and Sciver out for much of the summer, it wasn’t until December’s Caribbean tour (under new head coach Jon Lewis) that they were back to winning ways.
