Guess who said this ...

“I love Bazball, mate. I think it’s brilliant.”

It was August 2023, and Brendon McCullum’s sermoniser barely had his feet under the desk at Tottenham (yes it’s Ange Postecoglou, OK). On June 30, the day before his first day as the first Australian to manage an English Premier League club, Postecoglou was at Lord’s to take in the second Ashes Test.

Brendon McCullum and Ange Postecoglou. Cut from the same cloth?Credit: Getty

It was the Jonny Bairstow Test before the Bairstow incident. On day three, when England’s wickets were dropping like flies. The celebrated former Celtic manager sat in the Cricket Australia suite with John and Janette Howard and watched Ben Stokes fall to Mitchell Starc for 17 and the subsequent tumble social media jokingly labelled Spursy.

Somebody hoped out loud he would not be taking notes on how to win from the hosts. In Postecoglou’s defence, by the time he was waxing lyrical about Bazball, England had gone on to win two of the last three Tests and drawn the series.

“In any sport, when I see teams kind of break the traditional mould, that’s when people get really uneasy about it – and that’s when you know, ‘OK, this could be something special’,” Postecoglou told Sky Sports just before his Spurs dugout debut against Brentford (a 2-2 away draw to kick off life without Harry Kane).

Postecoglou at Lord’s in 2023 with (back row from left) Nationals MP Michael McCormack, former prime minister John Howard and his wife Janette, and Cricket Australia chair Mike Baird (front........

© The Age