“Stop giving your wicket away to stupid over-aggressive shots” - Geoffrey Boycott slams England batters despite Lord’s Test victory

Former England cricketer and commentator Geoffrey Boycott has lashed out at English top-order batters Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope for their ‘stupid’ and ‘over-aggressive shots’ in the Lord’s Test, which England won by 22 runs.

In his column for Daily Telegraph, Boycott wrote that England need to finetune their batting approach and not blindly go behind the Bazball approach, curbing their attacking and over-aggressive shots.

“Stop giving your wicket away to stupid over-aggressive shots because you can do better and England want more from you. The coach Brendon McCullum is on record recently saying that England don’t talk about Bazball and need to finetune their approach to batting. So no excuses any more,” Geoffrey Boycott wrote in his column for Daily Telegraph.

Later, Boycott went down hard at Crawley, who could score only five centuries and 17 half-centuries in 57 Tests so far at an average of 30.89. Interestingly, Crawley could score only one half-centuries in six innings in the ongoing five-match Test series against India.

“How many more chances is Crawley going to get? He has learned nothing in his 57 Tests. A waft in the first innings caught behind and a front-foot drive in the second innings to a wide sucker ball caught at gully. It was just a replay of too many of his dismissals. Time to go. Five hundreds and an average of 31 is not good enough,” he wrote.

Furthermore, Boycott suggested the No.3 batter Pope to go back to basic batting instead of slavishly following the Bazball ideology, giving an example of how Joe Root, terming him the best batter in the world.

“His problem is when he first goes in he is hyperactive, fidgety, like a cat on a hot tin roof. Pope starts like a millionaire, a shot a ball, as if he already has a hundred to his name … Early on the captain and coach sold Bazball to all the players and Ollie seems to have bought into it 100 percent and is so keen to show he is a disciple. Perhaps he feels he must play positive and aggressively or he won’t keep his place,” he went on to write.

“He needs to go back to basic batting which is to assess the situation and bat accordingly, not bat slavishly to an ideology or how he thinks the captain and coach want him to play. Take a look at Joe Root. Joe does his own thing and makes runs and he is the best batsman in the world,” he added.

With England leading the series 2-1, they are scheduled to take on India, led by Shubman Gill, in the fourth Test of the five-match series, from Wednesday, July 23 at Old Trafford in Manchester.

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