New Zealand v England: Bazball faces year of destiny after tour ends on a downer

The New Zealand series was a perfect microcosm: after crushing wins in the first two Tests, by eight wickets and 323 runs, England lost the third and final game in Hamilton on Tuesday by 423 runs, their fourth-heaviest runs defeat.

Is it always going to be this way, supporters might ask? In a word, ‘yes’. As Stokes made clear after the match at Seddon Park, with specific reference to his troublesome left hamstring, “I ain’t holding back.” Nor, you can be sure, will his team.

And so England head into 2025, a year that will define Bazball (although technically the Ashes series is due to finish on January 8, 2026).

Five Tests against India next summer, then five in Australia next winter, with the hors d’oeuvre of a one-off Test against Zimbabwe in May.

The prospect is mouthwatering – once the Zimbabweans have been ushered off the premises – as England take on the top two-ranked Test teams in the world, currently engaged in their own private battle Down Under.

All that can be said with certainty is that anything could happen: England could blow both sides away or be blown away themselves; one might just as successfully predict the date on which the world will end.

This, of course, is what makes it all so entertaining, exciting and exasperating. England have breathed new life into Test cricket – no bad thing in a franchise-dominated landscape – and deserve credit for that; rather like copies of The Yorkshire Post, you can’t take your eyes off them.

At the same time, they are not a great side yet, but a side capable of producing great things. Twice this year they have lost by over 400 runs (Rajkot in February the other occurrence), and great sides are not so easily dismantled.

Perhaps they never will be a great side in the conventional sense, one able to string together 16 successive Test wins, for example, as did Australia from 1999-2001, and again from 2005-2008, West Indies the next best with 11 on the spin in 1984, the year of Orwell.

It is the big series, the big performances that invariably stick in the mind – most obviously England’s 2005 Ashes triumph under Michael Vaughan. England should have the tools to beat India at home (should), but the Ashes Down Under is the real acid test. Win there, and Stokes, like Vaughan, will have his place in the pantheon; lose, and experience an indifferent 2025 in the round, and Bazball will be remembered more for its edge-of-the-seat drama than anything more meaty.

Despite the humbling in Hamilton, credit is due to Stokes and his players. England’s series triumph was their first for 16 years in New Zealand, who had just hammered India 3-0 away.

England have unearthed some talent in 2024: Gus Atkinson (52 wickets in his first 11 Tests, a hundred and a hat-trick), Brydon Carse (27 wickets in five Tests this winter, with the pace and bounce that could prove so useful in Australia, not to mention the reliability that cannot be offered by Jofra Archer and Mark Wood), and Jacob Bethell (three half-centuries at No 3).

On the flip side, questions remain over opener Zak Crawley (who averaged eight in New Zealand); Ollie Pope (left vulnerable by the emergence of Bethell and Jamie Smith), and Shoaib Bashir (who has done ok but who highlights that England do not have a world-class spinner, or a domestic system designed to produce them).

Stokes’ fitness is an obvious worry – it’s incredible how physically fit the players are now but how fragile they seem for the job that they do (at the risk of sounding about 90 years old, Fred Trueman sometimes bowled 1,000 overs a season and never broke down).

England’s batting is heavily reliant on the Yorkshire pair Joe Root and Harry Brook, while New Zealand’s Will O’Rourke gave a worrying glimpse of what England can expect next winter with some outstanding pace bowling at Seddon Park especially; what a player he looks.

If one is being brutally frank, the Kiwis threw away the series by dropping Brook five times in the first Test (out of eight drops in total).

While their non-selection of Mitchell Santner and Will Young prior to Hamilton was odd, their ongoing selection of Tim Southee in his last series (six wickets at 54) surely sentimental.

Going into 2025, the rollercoaster ride that is Bazball, like the wildest of marriages, is on top of the world one minute and on the rocks the next, the issuing of divorce papers seemingly as likely as the whispering of sweet nothings.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​