At the end of a sorry Ashes loss capped off by news of Harry Brook’s involvement in a late-night incident two months earlier, Brendon McCullum set out his position as England head coach: if his wings are clipped and his ethos compromised then “maybe there is someone better” to do the role.
The caveat is key here. McCullum is keen to continue and having held talks with Richard Thompson and Richard Gould, chair and chief executive respectively of the England and Wales Cricket Board, he appears set to – at least for the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka that begins in less than a fortnight.
But an ECB review into the Ashes tour is already under way and will run in parallel to this, from which recommendations for the Test set-up will follow. While there is acceptance of mistakes in Australia – at 4-1, how could there not be? – McCullum has limits as regards imposed solutions.
McCullum said: “I think whatever you do in life, you have to have some authenticity and for me as coach, when you’re trying to guide, shepherd and assist players, you need to have influence over how the environment runs.
“And [you need] to be in charge of a lot of those decisions that are made when the pressure’s on. So as long as that remains, I’m open to progress, I’m open to evolution and some nipping and tucking. But without being ultimately able to steer the ship, maybe there is someone better.
“It depends what changes, right? I have a firm conviction in a lot of my methods. I’m not against evolution and not against progress. However, you need to stand for something.”
While McCullum’s currently pared-back coaching staff is likely to be one area looked into, the team culture under the New Zealander and the team director, Rob Key, is most under the spotlight. And this final press conference from McCullum came before the Telegraph revealed Brook’s £30,000 fine for an altercation with a nightclub bouncer on the preceding tour of New Zealand.
Though the incident took place two months earlier, it rather crystallised the image of an unserious set-up that underperformed. Not that it was news to McCullum or Key. Nor does anyone involved come out of it that well.
Brook was clearly under the belief it was fine to be out late and drinking the night before captaining his country in a one-day international, less than a year into the job. And the ECB hierarchy now marking McCullum’s work all thought a hushed-up punishment was the way to go. Brook handed himself in, swallowed the maximum fine, but all parties were naive to think it wouldn’t resurface.
“Half our guys don’t have a drink to be honest,” said McCullum, when the question about the team’s relationship was asked more broadly. “They’ll have a couple of beers every now and again. I think people do that in most walks of life.”
Players have to live their lives given the time on the road – and perceptions are often driven by results – but it is hard to square McCullum’s words with Brook’s error. And despite no reports of overt wrongdoing, the same probably goes for the mid-tour break in Noosa – a break Brook happily described as a “belting time” afterwards.
Harry Brook is under scrutiny after a troubled tour on and off the field. Photograph: Robbie Stephenson/PA
This is only one strand of the review into a tour on which England’s players did not give themselves – or were not given – the best chance to succeed. Ben Stokes appears in the strongest position to continue as Test captain and wants McCullum alongside him. But it was also hard not to discern a divergence in their thinking as Australia set off on an 11-day march to a series win.
Asked if they had been on the same page given some of the mixed messaging, McCullum replied: “The good thing about having the relationship we’ve got is that we always have robust conversations. It doesn’t always mean he’s always going to agree with my stuff, or I’ll agree with some of his. But we commit and support one another. That’s how I think leadership works.
“We’ve just got to keep challenging ourselves in certain ways, always racking our brains to ensure we’re sitting on the right tactics. Sometimes the language we use is kind of the same but in different words. But it comes from the same place. Ultimately we have the same vision for this team.”
In the end, the team-bonding that McCullum made central to their approach leading into the Ashes ended up serving solely as a coping mechanism in defeat. Players were seemingly not prepared or up-skilled sufficiently for Australia’s unique challenges. The upshot was some wincingly soft cricket during the clutch moments.
Brook, though absurdly gifted, was among the most culpable here, be it his back foot drive in Perth during the crazed hour that tossed away the first Test, or the footwork-devoid thrash at Mitchell Starc during the Gabba day-nighter when the left-armer’s pivotal twilight spell had just begun.
Very soon, the same player will be leading an England team to Sri Lanka and then a T20 World Cup that will feed into McCullum’s longer term future. For different but not unrelated reasons, both are on notice.
