✨ Read this insightful post from BBC Sport 📖
📂 Category:
📌 Key idea:
This makes managing director Rob Key seem the most vulnerable, simply because he is the easiest for the ECB bosses – ultimately ECB CEO Richard Gould and Chairman Richard Thomson – to get rid of.
I think as a trio they are very similar.
When England were at their best, they had opposing personalities like Michael Vaughan as captain and Duncan Fletcher as coach in 2005, or the tough Eoin Morgan and Trevor Bayliss, who won the 2019 World Cup.
Key is a nice fellow but he may ponder whether he has let McCullum and Stokes get too much of what they want.
Stokes is a great leader on the field and McCullum has a great attitude as a coach, but they need to be pointed in the right direction when it comes to preparation and planning.
Rather than challenge that, being someone who would keep Stokes and McCullum’s feet to the fire, Key signed on.
There has to be someone with an old-school mentality to challenge ideas and monitor change, with Alec Stewart a very obvious candidate after all the good work he did at Surrey.
England have decent players like Zak Crawley, who bowled beautifully in scoring 85 yesterday after struggling for two Tests, or Jimmy Smith.
Yes, he played a poor shot on Sunday, but he made an impressive 60 in the second half, having struggled badly beforehand.
This simply comes down to preparation.
I said half-jokingly after the second Test in Brisbane that England would now play well in Adelaide because they had two warm-ups.
Look what happened.
If they had batted as they did here from a position of strength in the second round on day two of the series in Perth, they would have won and we could be looking at a very different situation.
And if Stokes and McCullum are in a contemplative mood as they appear to be, they must also consider the environment in their dressing room.
We can’t sit in the dressing room, so we don’t really know what’s going on, but do the players feel able to speak up? Can anyone go against the model?
⚡ What do you think?
#️⃣ #Ashes #England #change #Brendon #McCullum #part #future #Jonathan #Agnew
