Economic ‘Bazball’ will have replaced UK’s safety-first approach to inflation and growth by 2025 | Larry Elliott

Rishi Sunak used just-go-for-it route in Covid crisis but Treasury and Bank of England now play with straightest of bats

The England cricket team are winning friends and admirers after adopting a style of play known as Bazball. Named after the side's coach, Brendon (Baz) McCullum, it is an aggressive, carefree approach to the game in which risks are taken with bat and ball. It doesn't always come off but, win or lose, it has made the England team a lot more fun to watch.

Rishi Sunak is a cricket fan and in his early days as Boris Johnson's chancellor he was a strong advocate of an economic form of Bazball. This was early 2020 and, in truth, the Treasury and the Bank of England had no choice but to throw caution to the wind because a global pandemic was raging. Sunak borrowed more than any other peacetime chancellor so that furloughed workers still received wages. The Bank cut interest rates to a record low of 0.1% and pumped billions of pounds into the economy through its bond-buying programme known as quantitative easing.