4 minute read
It’s become one of the great, weird, modern cricket clichés that Brendon McCullum has the ability to make players feel they are an incorrect height. (Invariably taller, invariably 10 feet.) But he doesn’t always make them feel that, does he? We’d be interested to know what height Shoaib Bashir currently believes himself to be, for example.
McCullum has previously said that his job is to make, “all those that sit in the dressing room feel like they can be 10 foot tall and bulletproof when they walk out to play.”
Upon his appointment by England, New Zealand’s Henry Nicholls (Hinry Knuckles to you) conveyed his heartfelt belief that his former captain was possessed of precisely this ability. “He gave everyone around him a lot of confidence and sort of made you feel like you were 10 feet tall and bulletproof,” he said.
Around the same time, Ben Stokes concurred that this was his new colleague’s USP: “He is all about making everyone feel, in his words, ’10 feet tall’.”
It’s a slightly weird goal. How would you actually feel if you were 10 feet tall? Gangly? Awkward? Hugely self conscious? Maybe you have a different perception of these things if, like McCullum, you’re only 5ft 7in yourself.
Everyone seems to buy into this artificial height inflation in any case. James Anderson said that midway through that first Test, McCullum spoke to the whole team and afterwards, “we all felt 10 feet tall.” (Maybe it was because they were towering over him. Or maybe he was standing far away.)
Speaking after the match, Stuart Broad went even further, saying the whole environment was now geared towards incorrectly gauging one’s height. “It’s not too structured,” he said of the new England setup. “It’s just a case of what do you need to do to make you feel you’re 10 foot tall?”
We could easily go on and on with this. (Josh Tongue: “I’m lucky to work under two coaches who make you feel 10 feet tall.” Sam Billings: “It’s to the point, it’s clear, it’s clarity, and it’s about making you feel 10 feet tall.”) But you get what we’re saying: Brendon McCullum’s philosophy is all about inculcating misconceptions about height.
The shrinking potion
But not everyone feels 10 feet tall do they? Some people might have felt 10 feet tall for a bit, but not many are banging their heads on the doorframe on the way out of the team.
This morning, Andy Bull gave a striking rundown of the 11 titans who played in that first Test match when the world was so small and the sky was so blue. Of those, Alex Lees, Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Foakes, Matt Potts, Stuart Broad, James Anderson and Matt Parkinson have all now exited the stage.
Look through those names and only Broad can possibly have retained all of his artificially acquired height. All the rest were handed a tape measure and reality check.
Which brings us to Shoaib Bashir.
Upon becoming England’s youngest player to 50 Test wickets, Bashir said: “I walk into this England team and I feel 10 feet tall because of the backing I get, and that makes a massive difference. I feel like I’m very well backed here. I’m well backed in county cricket as well, but I feel like England cricket is my happy place.”
So how tall did he feel when England so conspicuously stopped backing him, over the winter?
When everything was on the line in the big A-rated target series, England concluded they didn’t really trust Bashir. They didn’t just leave him out of the team; they omitted him in favour of someone who was only ever going to be a buyer of wickets and a scorer of meaningless consolation runs.
Now Bashir’s back, but surely not at the towering height of old, because it’s a lot harder to give a player a Goliath complex when you were the one responsible for the previous shinkage.
It can be done, of course, but where Ollie Robinson has been brought back and embiggened with a conspicuous, growth hormonal, “We really want you, mate,” Bashir has simply seeped back into the team. He is essentially filling a void that was first created when England reappraised his height when the stakes were at their highest.
Reselection therefore doesn’t come across as a big vote of confidence in Bashir’s ability. Not really. It’s not nothing – England clearly kind of like him – but he’s no longer being buoyed by the unequivocal Baz boosterism that he himself said was previously helping him so much.
So what height do you attribute to yourself with this kind of qualified support? In reality Shoaib Bashir is 6ft 4in – but how tall does he currently feel?