There’s a quote from Legacy, James Kerr’s book about the All Blacks, that I have always liked: “Our values decide our character, our character decides our value.” As England’s Test side sets about its great post-Ashes reset, I think it is applicable.
Culture is a work in progress and always will be, and the positive that has emerged from their winter in Australia – when, on and off the field, their culture was found wanting – is that they now have an opportunity and an appetite to reset it.
Brendon McCullum, who established the culture after his appointment in 2022, is now tasked with changing it. The New Zealander, England’s head coach in all formats, and Rob Key, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s managing director of men’s cricket, are extremely lucky to have kept their roles to lead the rebuild.
I can’t think of any team in any sport whose leaders have been so bullish in their philosophy over a number of years, have experienced that philosophy and its outcomes being brutally exposed in the key moment they had explicitly been building towards, whose employers have been forced into a review of everything that contributed to that failure and who have come out of that with their jobs intact.
For better or worse they remain to lead the rebuild and England have to hope they nail it.
But when I talk about a change of culture I don’t just mean within the squad – the relationship with the county game also had to be reconfigured. Some of the comments by Key and McCullum about English domestic cricket have been crass and condescending, so I am pleased to see a tangible difference in their attitude, with the creation of a County Insight Group comprising head coaches that will regularly meet England’s leadership.
If Key and McCullum have not been held accountable for their contributions to England’s failure in the Ashes, a couple of players have after a period when there was too much loyalty shown.
So where does McCullum stand now, after the team’s style of play, their culture, their planning, their preparation, their strategy, as well as the players’ technique and fitness, were tested and found badly wanting by an Australia side some way from full strength? You have to assume he is evolving and if he and Key have reflected well they will have learned a huge amount. He developed a particular approach over his playing and coaching career and now the question is whether he can change it and improve it.
I sometimes struggle to see the best in McCullum. In 2006, I did my level four coaching course, the ECB’s top qualification, aimed at professional coaches. One of the first things we were taught was that even before you open your mouth you’re saying a lot, by the way you dress and the way you conduct yourself, your punctuality, the example you set.
That was 20 years ago and times change, but I am always reminded of that session when I see McCullum with his feet up, flip-flops on, sunglasses covering his eyes, baseball hat worn the wrong way, tattoos on show. When he talks, as he did during the Ashes, about England being “within a bee’s dick of getting a win”, it makes me shudder. I don’t think any of this means he is a bad coach, but I’m always fighting to control the unconscious bias he triggers in me.
He is clearly a people person, someone without airs and graces, someone who has great empathy with the players and communicates well with them, someone who knows all about the pressure that comes with representing your country. He has huge strengths, but what many coaches try to do is to have people around them who reinforce areas where they may not be as strong and I’m not sure he has tried to create that kind of environment with England.
McCullum admits he is not a hugely technical coach, but has he provided experienced coaches who specialise in that side of the game and can support the players in the technical foundations of cricket? You may think players good enough to play for England should have those technical foundations locked down, but that is not necessarily the case. To take the two players who have recently lost their place in the side, Zak Crawley’s method of playing across straight balls and Ollie Pope allowing his head to fall over to the off side, led to a repetitive pattern of dismissals.
We want our players to make runs because of their technique, not in spite of it. England have made some new coaching appointments since the winter, but have they found the right people to make the environment a complete one?
His messaging will also have to change. For four years he’s been talking about running towards the danger, but now it’s about winning key moments and playing smart cricket, while still being an attacking side. It will be interesting to see how that plays out, but England have good, intelligent players who should be able to adapt.
England coaches are going to be judged on the bigger series, which at the moment are against India and Australia. McCullum has led this side through four of those and not won any, and that’s why he’s a very lucky guy to still have a job. But that doesn’t mean the pressure’s off when New Zealand and Pakistan visit this summer. Expectations will be high: I think we’ll comprehensively beat Pakistan, but the Black Caps will be a good litmus test.
This isn’t a young, evolving side any more. It’s full of experience, players who are at good ages and should be approaching their peak. If McCullum can bring them with him as he implements his changes England should be in a great place to win both series and to move on with positivity restored, last winter an increasingly distant memory, towards bigger tests to come.