FILE PHOTO: Cricket - England - Brendon McCullum Photocall and Roundtable - Lord's Cricket Ground, London, Britain - May 27, 2022 New England Test coach Brendon McCullum poses during the photocall Action Images via Reuters/Paul Childs/File Photo
(Reuters) - England test coach Brendon McCullum may not be a fan of the word, but "Bazball", the term used to describe the team's swashbuckling approach to test cricket since he took charge in 2022, has been added to the Collins online dictionary.
"I don't have any idea what 'Bazball' is," New Zealander McCullum said last year. "It's not just all crash and burn, if you look at the approach, and that's why I don't really like that silly term that people are throwing out there."
The term comes from McCullum's nickname, Baz, and Collins online dictionary gives its definition of the noun as "a style of cricket in which the batting side attempts to gain the initiative by playing in a highly aggressive manner".
Bazball did not win the 2023 Word of the Year award having been shortlisted, losing out to "AI" (Artificial Intelligence), but it will be added to the next print version of the Collins English Dictionary.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes, editing by Ed Osmond)
