A Plate of Mutton Seekh Kebab

“The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.”

16th June, 2023; 11:00 am. We are well into the English summer. The sun stands high and proud in the Birmingham sky, bathing the Edgbaston Stadium in a lovely, warm glow. The stands are packed, as one would expect for the opening morning of The Ashes.

What an occasion. 150 years of history and tradition packed into one rivalry. Every couple of years, England and Australia engage in a series of five Test matches to eventually hand Australia another trophy. Well, most times, anyway. The 2021 Ashes finished 4-0 to Australia, almost a 5-0 but for a stubborn last-ditch partnership in Sydney.

But this is a different England. They are slick, lean, and muscular. Even their helmets have shed the traditional blue for a smooth, dark blue that's almost black. The white of their jerseys is a shade crisper than the rest. Zak Crawley, with a career that has been middling at best and underwhelming at worst, stands at the crease. On the other end is Pat Cummins, Australia’s captain and an all-timer of a fast bowler.

Test cricket has a way of building tension, and it's never more palpable than the first ball of an important series. Like a good opening paragraph in a book, it can set you up and draw you in. In 2021, the Ashes started with England's Rory Burns getting bowled behind his legs.

Cummins runs in for another First Ball™. Bend forward, and you can hear deep breaths and murmurs of “Here we go”, punctuated by the rustle of spectators shifting in their seats.

Conventional wisdom would suggest a regular ball, maybe one that is full enough to lull the batter in. Cummins' delivery is the first two of those things, but Crawley isn't lulled towards it. He walks into it with the same confidence I have when I'm heading to the door to collect my food delivery. Slapped for four, ball one. Edgbaston roars as the commentators scramble for words. The camera pans to England’s dressing room, where Ben Stokes, wearing a bucket hat, is caught between laughter and disbelief at Crawley's audacity.

Bazball (noun) - A framework used by the England men's team for playing Test cricket in the image of their coach Brendon McCullum (fondly called Baz) and captain Ben Stokes.

Brendon McCullum approached his cricket like it’s the best party he's ever been to. The cynicisms of high-performance sport evaded him, unable to fog his mind even at the most intense moments. Picture this - a World Cup final in Melbourne. New Zealand's first ever appearance at the grand title clash. Throughout the tournament, they have played brave and aggressive cricket, completely surrendering to the spirit of their captain. As the final begins, McCullum dances down the track to each of his first three balls, gets beat every time, eventually hears his stumps splatter, and walks off with a sheepish grin under his helmet.

In the summer of 2022, when he and Stokes took over the helm of an England team that was too circumspect to chase 250 over an entire day of cricket, the fan fiction was waiting to be written.

And boy did they write. Their stuff has been more prolific than Gaiman and Steinbeck put together. The quality of the prose is best left alone, but the tempo is relentless. In fact, it has only picked up intensity and loudness in these two years. The throwaway term, coined in jest by a journalist, is now a phenomenon, a virtual Bible with which to evaluate every action of this team. Zak Crawley bashes Cummins for four? Bazball. Ben Duckett hits three fours off Ravichandran Ashwin in one over? Brother, you are killing me. Ben Stokes making intuitive field placements like, you know, every other captain? You genius! England don’t play cricket anymore; they play Bazball.

Before the thought even pops into your head, I’m here to tell you, yes, this stuff has reached LinkedIn.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (also known as frequency illusion) is a cognitive bias in which people notice a specific thing more frequently after recently coming to know about it.

A simple Google search feeds me explainer articles by Hindustan Times, Mint, IndianExpress, and, out of all else, Collins Dictionary.

As you can imagine, the chat can sometimes get nauseating. At different points, members of this England dressing room have implied that their approach to Test cricket might just be the saviour this format needs. The evening after Yashasvi Jaiswal took the English bowlers to the cleaners and scored a massive century, Ben Duckett suggested that England deserve a slice of credit for inspiring other teams to play with aggression. During one of the Tests, McCullum apparently told his team that they would be happy to chase down 600 runs, should India mount those many.

Writers, commentators, journalists - everyone and their grandmas are besotted with wonder of Bazball. They don't even have to be English. A week or so back, Sanjay Manjrekar spent an entire afternoon gushing over Ben Stokes' field placements. The other commentators, far from being objective and calling them as natural responses to a batter, were all part of this rave. One of them even quipped, “Stokes sees the game differently.”

This reminds me of the restaurant Karim’s in Jama Masjid, Delhi. Ask a random group of ten people about the gold standard of Mughlai cuisine in the city, and most will point to Karim’s. Even if one has never been to Delhi, Karim’s has immense recall value. After countless visits, I can vouch for their quality. But ask someone who has spent enough time surfing through Delhi’s food, and they might just throw a few names that do certain aspects of the cuisine just a tad better. Visit Al-Jawahar - in the same lane as Karim's - for their thick kormas and soft keema naans; Kale Baba and Qureshi for some perfectly-marinated kebabs; and Alkauzer for their melt-in-the-mouth galawati or kakori, or both, why not?

So why does Karim's have such a halo around it while the others languish in near-obscurity, needing niche lists for spreading their word? Let me borrow a passage from my friend Sairam Krishnan, a seasoned marketing lead and writer of this wonderful Substack.

“Karim’s had told a story.

All through the decades after independence, Karim’s had played themselves up, telling everyone their origins, the way they made their food, and the mystery of their recipes. This was why, they said, their food was the best. They said the same thing, over and over again. A couple of newspaper articles appeared, a foreign correspondent turned up, then two. The story was repeated, and repeated again. The story stuck, and after a while became so powerful and so resounding that everyone knew it, believed it.”

Ever noticed how a message, when repeated often enough, becomes part of our vocabulary? You'd be hard-pressed to go three minutes of an England game without hearing about Bazball. It's like a relentless marketing campaign, bombarding you with ads and posters at every turn.

While the actual cricket is far from groundbreaking - I'm surprised fans of the West Indies from a certain era haven't revolted yet - the constant buzz is new for this sport. Tactical discussions, especially the kind attributed to cerebral coaches, is par for the course in football and basketball. Maybe even hockey. Cricket, on the other hand, is an individualist endeavour. Each delivery boils down to a batter responding to a bowler.

To be honest, Bazball is more of a mood than a tactical framework. If we must use the term, it can be accurately defined as the dressing room ambiance fostered by Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, where players are urged to be positive and express themselves on the field, free from the fear of failure or its repercussions.

That sounds normal and great. But turning a team's vibe into a slogan seems a bit, well, wet.

That being said, this narrative has achieved two cool things. First, it's cast a unique, funky aura over this England team. They may not have set the world on fire, but they're substantially more entertaining now than they have been in a long while. Their batters and bowlers take the kind of risks that mock the conventions of Test cricket.

On the same morning in Birmingham, with the scoreboard reading 325-7 - hardly a secure position - Joe Root, the epitome of calm, old-school batting elegance, swivelled and scooped Pat Cummins for a six behind the wicket. Yeap, behind the wicket. Mark Taylor, one of Australia's great captains, was on commentary.

“You can't do that?!”

Scyld Berry, a respected, senior writer who has seen hundreds of Test matches, wrote an entire essay on that shot alone and how it kicked off the most dazzling hour of Test cricket he had ever seen.

This grandiose babble from the media and the dressing room, giving this team the air of a WWE wrestler with spandex shorts and spiked purple hair, almost adds to the image.

Secondly, and it is taking us time to admit it, this babbling might work for many. Some of the players are emerging from that dressing room with puffed chests and gums in their mouth, strutting around the field as if they were 10-feet tall. There is no way Zak Crawley does that at any other point of English cricket. In fact, at most other points, Crawley, with his mediocre batting average, would be playing some quiet domestic cricket instead of an Ashes opener at a packed Edgbaston. That he's backed to take on the world's best in the most important series of an English cricket calendar speaks volumes about the energy that's been injected into the dressing room.

In a sport and format that takes itself way, way too seriously, McCullum and Stokes’ England have been a refreshing addition to the palette. Along with all the crested blazers and perfectly-creased trousers, it's great to have a team walking around with bucket hats, flip-flops, and a pint of irreverence.

Mark Taylor and Scyld Berry's remarks actually sum the whole thing up best. It is a positive way of playing, made to sound like an unprecedented act of bravery, but is undeniably fun to experience. A bit like that plate of Mutton Seekh at Karim’s. Go order one next time you’re in Delhi. Have it with a tawa roti, and get some mint chutney on the side.