England wicketkeeper warns South Africa: Ignore ‘Bazball’ at your peril

England wicketkeeper batter Sam Billings says that South Africa cannot afford to ignore the so-called Bazball approach to Test cricket.

The Proteas are out to cement their place in the top two of the World Test Championship standings but face a team with a bold new approach to the game.

Ignore ‘Bazball’ at your peril

South Africa lost their warm-up match to an England Lions team adopting the same style in a big warning to the tourists.

“We’ve (England Lions) beaten an international team over four days by an innings in a manner of scoring 5.74 an over. You’d be pretty stupid to ignore that, if I’m honest. If that’s not a wake-up call… because we’re not even the best XI,” Billings was quoted as saying by Daily Mail.

“So, it’s up to them, really, but I think that’s laid out a pretty strong statement in the way we want the cricket to be played, but also being able to execute it and having the players to do that was really impressive.”

“This (Canterbury ground where the Lions-SA game was played) is a very similar ground to Lord’s (where the first England-South Africa Test will be played) with the slope and things like that. There’s a couple of guys who Ollie Robinson had on toast this week. He bowled exceptionally well. It’s a similar kind of ground and a similar kind of feel. So the fact we got 20 wickets on a pretty flat pitch that had six heavy rollers on… What did we get? 672? It’s impossible not to take confidence, certainly as a group, but some of the guys are in the Test squad as well and they’ll take a lot of confidence into next week,” added Billings.

England may have a secret weapon

Seamer Ollie Robinson did some damage to the Proteas and no harm to his chances of playing in the series against South Africa.

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“I’m a big fan of Ollie in terms of his character on the field as well — how he always provides an intensity even if physically it doesn’t come across that way,” said Billings.

“The way he approaches the game is infectious. And he backed up his performance in the first innings: he actually got better and from a pace point of view I was further back than I was first dig, when you’d think the heavy rollers would kind of deaden the pitch up.”