Rob Key was unsure whether he wanted the top job in English men’s cricket. A year on from his appointment, and the impact he has had on the team and the sport is obvious, writes MIKE ATHERTON.
It was a lovely spring morning, sun up and a fresh two-club breeze blowing straight off the English channel. It whipped across the Prince’s Golf Club, a fine and historic links in Kent where Gene Sarazen won the Open in 1932 and where, more pertinently for us, Rob Key, the managing director of England men’s cricket and one of the architects of the national side’s recent revival, likes to walk his dog, play some golf and do his thinking.
Once upon a time, when he was a whippersnapper on the Sky Cricket commentary team, recently retired with a modest Test record, albeit with a double hundred to his name, I might have summoned him north. Now, though, in the week before the anniversary of his appointment to the top job, he is riding high, and so to Prince’s it was to reflect on a remarkable first year in charge of the men’s team.
Key, 43, has been an inspired appointment. He has been a breath of fresh air for the ECB, has overseen the rejuvenation of an ailing Test team, delivered a World Cup win in Australia and banished the negativity that followed a dismal Ashes series two winters ago. At the outset, Key reckoned that “English cricket can have it all,” and, so far, his optimism has been well founded.
Having gone through the headhunting and interview process, he admitted to some initial doubts about a sudden change of career. “I remember sitting in the final interview thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ Tom Harrison eventually rang me to say, ‘Congratulations, you’ve got the job,’ and I didn’t know if it was congratulations. It could be the worst thing ever. I had a great job at Sky, which I loved doing, and a platform I didn’t think I’d have,” he says.
“But before I knew it I was on a train into London, not having a clue about anything, and being shown ‘org charts’ at Lord’s – I didn’t know what an ‘org[anisation] chart’ was, didn’t know who anyone was and trying to work out who the CFO and COO was. It was just after Easter break and everyone was on holiday or working from home, but I had one thing to do, which was to find a coach. So I had a very clear goal and focused on that.”
When he was appointed on April 17, the general reaction was broadly positive, although sniffy in some quarters that the job had gone to a man who wears white trainers, likes to dress down, had no management experience, had seemingly walked in off the golf course and straight out of the commentary box, without accounting for his years of playing and captaincy with Kent, and his obviously intelligent views in public. Did he feel that some underestimated him?
“I always feel people think I’m a bit stupid, which is a great skill actually because people tell you more because they think you won’t understand,” he says. “I like to think I never try to judge people by the way they talk or the way they dress.”
Much of Key’s job is about getting the big decisions right, and the three big decisions that confronted him immediately were choosing a new captain and two new coaches once he had decided to split the coaching role. He wanted someone who would not mess up an already good white-ball team, and appointed the Australian Matthew Mott, but for the Test team he needed a transformation, and he went for two men, as captain and coach, with little experience in their new fields at all, Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum.
“Experience is massively overvalued,” he says. “Experience can be the thing that stops you getting a job, as much as it can be the thing that gets you the job. You shouldn’t look at whether someone has done a job for 20 years, you want to know whether they were any good in that 20 years. Experience can really cost you. The same with selection: if players, or coaches, have talent and are good enough you put them in.
“I wanted to change the mentality most of all. When sports people fail, most think it’s because they are not trying hard enough or they don’t want it badly enough, or they are not tough enough, all those things. I felt they [the Test team] were trying too hard, and wanted it too badly and were almost suffocated by it. I felt they needed to have a bit of pressure taken off them and to think positively; not to play a certain way necessarily, but just to have the right mentality.
“For the coach I wanted someone who thought like me but had credibility. I wanted someone who was going to grab hold of that team, not just with his philosophy but so that [Stuart] Broad, [James] Anderson, Stokes, or whoever, respected him for what he had done. I didn’t just want a facilitator in that role. I wanted someone to change the culture and I felt Brendon [as captain] had done exactly that with New Zealand.
“As for Stokes, I had heard a few whispers coming out of the dressing room about how brilliantly he had done the job in that Covid ODI series against Pakistan. I loved the way they played that series. In England we often think showing fight is getting stuck in, ‘over my dead body’ stuff. But I think risking failure by playing aggressively, and then keep on doing it, takes as much courage as anything.
“I knew Ben, but not particularly well. When you meet great players, there are two types: there are those who understand why the rest of us can’t do what they can do, and there are those who don’t. I used to play golf with Warney [Shane Warne] and when he was hitting it all over the place, I used to say to him, ‘Just remember this feeling because that’s how the rest of us felt playing cricket.’ Ben understands; he’s got great empathy, because he’s gone through it all. It’s the scars that make him. He understands what it is like to be in a low place. What I didn’t realise is what a good cricket brain he has.
“I’ve been lucky in how well those two have gelled. Equally, I deliberately wanted those two positions aligned. I kept hearing people say that I needed a contrast to Stokes, some yin to his yang. But I didn’t see the logic in that at all: all I saw in that instance would have been argument. I wanted two people who were completely aligned and thought exactly the same way in their basic philosophy.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen. It wasn’t really about winning or losing, but getting players to maximise their potential. We’ve now got a clear way of playing, which makes selection easier too. It’s not about scoring at six an over all the time, but players need to have the ability to both soak up pressure and put bowlers under pressure. The tactical element is where they are brilliant those two; they’ve got such a good feel for the game.
“Most captains and coaches are all over you when you are doing well and then nowhere when you are struggling; these two are the opposite. They know what to say to someone who is struggling. I remember listening to Mike Brearley once talking about [Ian] Botham and him saying Beefy was easy to read because he was either up or down, but the quiet guy in the corner was the difficult one. Brendon and Ben are aware of the quiet bloke in the corner. That’s what I think the ‘Bazball’ thing is, really.”
Looking back now, with series wins against New Zealand, South Africa and Pakistan, it is easy to forget just how nervy the opening win of the new regime was, at Lord’s against New Zealand. Does Key remember feeling as nervous during those few days as when he played, and where did he watch that tense run chase from?
“I remember thinking about that stat of one win in 17 and thinking, well it would be nice to stop that,” he says. “I’ve never been one to be too emotional about the game, because I think I’ve got a decent handle on it – I know it’s important but not that important – but I knew the significance of that game. I don’t really like being in the dressing room, I don’t like hobnobbing in the boxes and I don’t want to wear a suit, so I just watched it in my office in the end.
“Every ground I go to, I have a bit of a problem where to watch because I want to be detached from the team – I think that’s important to be able to give a different point of view – but I also want to watch it on television, because you see a bit more, and I don’t really want to be on camera. For the [T20] World Cup final [England beat Pakistan] I went all the way to Australia and ended up watching on the telly in my hotel room.”
The mention of Australia is a good time to throw matters forward to the Ashes. Key’s own Ashes career involved four Tests and not much success. Had things worked out differently, he might have played in that 2005 series, but his indifferent form on the 2002-03 tour probably counted against him. Was he scarred? Did that Ashes experience stand out and has it influenced his thinking?
“I was 22 or 23 on that trip, very young, but I loved that trip,” he says. “I remember Adam Gilchrist coming up to introduce himself – I thought, ‘I know who you are, mate’ – and I knew Steve Waugh from Kent and I loved the way that they played. Their influence over my generation was quite profound actually.
“You guys had a tough time of it in the Nineties against some bloody good players, but then there was an influx of great Australian players in two-division county cricket when my generation was coming through – Darren Lehmann at Yorkshire with Michael Vaughan; Andrew Symonds with me at Kent; Mike Hussey with Graeme Swann at Northants.
“We started to develop a little bit of their philosophy. Vaughan had it; [Andrew] Strauss [who played with Justin Langer at Middlesex] had it. That series in 2005, they lost the first Test at Lord’s and then got 400 in a day in the next game. That came from the influences that we had. When people talk about Steve Smith coming to Sussex, we’ve all taken things from each other.
“I got to know Warney very well through poker and he was a huge influence on my thinking. He was always, ‘How are you trying to get the batter out?’ We were of an impressionable age then and you had a choice: the county cricket mentality, slightly negative, or the other way. I imagine we will keep coming this summer. If you face Pat Cummins you can’t just block the life out of it.”
With the big decisions on personnel settled for now, Key’s next challenge is around central contracts, the schedule and the availability of England players in the face of the growing financial muscle of the franchises. Given that Mark Wood and Jofra Archer, say, are at the Indian Premier League, and therefore not preparing as they might for the Ashes, has Key (and therefore the ECB) given up and accepted that they cannot compete with the IPL?
For Key, pragmatism rules. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” he says. “We’re paying Jofra probably half as much as Mumbai Indians. What I’m trying to do is find a world where there is a compromise, where we keep control. It’s a delicate balance. If you stop people doing this stuff they will just not sign contracts.
“It’s very simple economics. An average county salary might be 70-80k; someone down the road is paying them that for three weeks, or double that. If you stop people, you end up forcing them to make choices that aren’t the best for us at all. That’s the trade-off with the IPL and all these other competitions.
“We are trying to work backwards from the Ashes. Is there a world where we can get them right for the Ashes? We think there is: that they can do a fair bit of work in the IPL, can play competitive cricket there, and can be ready. That seems to be the best of both worlds. If you force the issue we will end up losing people. It’s a fascinating part of this job.
“As yet, nobody has turned down a central contract. Players still value it massively; they value Test cricket massively. Early next year during the India Test series [in India in January and February] there will be franchise cricket going on and I can’t see anyone choosing franchise cricket over that Test series. I might be wrong, but I don’t see it.
“We will put match fees up, because right now you can probably earn more for an after-dinner speech so that’s not right, but it’s not going to solve the issue by stopping people wanting to play franchise cricket. Personally, I think the answer for us is to concentrate on our own game, which is what India do well. Whatever our premier short form competition is, we need to make sure it is the best it can be, so we can pay our players enough. It won’t be as glamorous as the IPL but if we make ours the best it can be, everything else can fit in with it.”
It was a very refreshing morning on the south coast, and not just because it is great to see a former colleague doing so well. There is a straightforwardness to Key, which is not always a common characteristic in cricket administration: he is bright but not stuffy; speaks in plain language, is totally uncorporate and knows his subject.
And the golf? It was a clash of styles, and of eras. ‘Bazball’ golf from Key: good gear and personalised golf balls, long drives and all over the shop. Tenacious, dirt on the clubs, “get the job done” golf from me. The rain came eventually and more wind, suiting northern sensibilities. Dormie three I went, but mindful that it’s a big summer for English cricket and hesitant to put a dent in the confidence of a man at the top of his game, I throttled back. It finished all square.
Originally published as Rob Key – the former commentator who spurred England’s Test cricket revolution