John Sadler: Bazball one of factors in Northamptonshire relegation
- Published
John Sadler was promoted to head coach when David Ripley stepped down at the end of the 2021 season
Northamptonshire head coach John Sadler says batters trying to emulate England's Bazball approach is one of the factors behind their relegation.
Their drop from County Championship Division One was confirmed by last week's draw at leaders Surrey.
Before the game at The Oval, they had only managed four batting points from their previous 12 matches.
"I think we got drawn into a bit of Bazball as a batting group early season," said Sadler.
"We've seen how England play, a couple of lads potentially wanted to play that way to get noticed further up (by the selectors) - the learning from that is there's more than one way to skin a cat.
"We've seen some very good players play a little old fashioned this year and still do very well," he told BBC Radio Northampton.
Northamptonshire finished sixth in Division One in 2022 but have only won one out of 13 games this season.
Sadler said they had relied on "good, hard, attritional cricket" last year and there were no excuses for this summer's downturn, but there were a number of contributing factors.
"That first block of six games, we lost five tosses out of six, the one that we did win, we won the game against Middlesex," he added.
"We had some big players injured, we lost our captain for a chunk of those games, we lost our wicketkeeper, Sando [Ben Sanderson] wasn't fit, he was in and out of the side and didn't have as much zip as he's got now.
"Emilio [Gay] had a knee operation two weeks before the start of the season, Tommy Taylor had a sore back, it's why we look at having squad depth.
"There's a number of reasons but ultimately we haven't played good enough cricket."
Northants almost doubled their batting points tally as their first-innings 357 all out against Surrey earned them three points, but had to settle for a draw despite making the leaders follow on.
"Before the game we had four batting points - if you'd told me that at the start of the season, I wouldn't have believed you," Sadler said.
"Four points is way off really. If you're only scoring four batting points over the course of a season, that's not going to put us in a position to win, and bowling-wise, with the injuries we've had, it's meant that Jack White's had to bowl more and more overs without a rest and Sando's had to play when he's not quite ready."
Northamptonshire finish the season with a home match against second-placed Essex, starting on Tuesday.