England cricket legend Sir Geoffrey Boycott insisted Brendon McCullum’s side “might as well be a circus” if they put entertainment ahead of winning throughout the Ashes.
Ben Stokes’ polarising call to declare on the first day coupled with a relaxed approach in the field for the second innings led to Australia snatching a two-wicket victory to take a 1-0 lead in the series.
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Surprisingly, the message from the England camp was that the game didn’t quite feel like a loss, despite the scoreline saying otherwise.
Although it was a fantastic match from an entertainment perspective, Boycott believes winning must be the priority, especially in a Test series with so much on the line.
And if it isn’t, well, McCullum and his troops might find a career in entertainment elsewhere.
“I enjoyed the cricket, it kept you on the edge of your seat,” Boycott said on the Vaughany and Tuffers Cricket Club podcast.
“England were winning every session, but they didn’t win the match, and that should tell them something for the next Test. They lost sight of the fact that the object is to win and then if you want to entertain then yes, by all means.
“But why can’t you win and entertain?
“When you get ahead of yourself – and that’s what England did – they stopped thinking.
“If you’re going to just entertain, they might as well be a circus. That’s it, go be a professional circus around the world.
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If you ask people in England ‘Do you want to win the Ashes, or do you want to entertain and lose?’, I know what the answer will be.”
Despite many England greats calling for the players to go into games with a win-at-all-costs mentality, a strange encounter at a spa reminded Stokes why the team love the Bazball style and will not stray from it.
“I had a conversation in the men’s changing room at a spa about the game, which was a bit awkward,” Stokes told reporters at Lord’s.
“He said ‘are you the cricketer or do you just look like him?’ And I was like, yeah, it is me.
“He just said, ‘I went down to the pub after work and I don’t even follow cricket, I was just going to go down for a quick few’. He ended up having a few more and said he was just transfixed on the game.”
Stokes, adamant England “always want to win every game we play”, added: “So when you hear stuff like that it obviously makes you feel good about what we’re doing, that it’s bringing a new fanbase to the game and it’s reaching people that it might never have reached before.”