If we learned one thing at the Oval last week, it is that this England team really needs Ben Stokes. So it came as a relief when, a couple of hours after the second Test against New Zealand ended in heavy defeat, he and Gus Atkinson were exonerated by the England and Wales Cricket Board after an investigation into their celebrations following victory in the first Test. But the governing body found itself in a process with no perfect outcome, and if the one it has ended up with is not the disaster it flirted with a week ago when Stokes was apparently considering retirement, it is still embarrassing.
Its handling of the incident was understandable, given the public drunkenness that marked the players’ trip to Noosa during the Ashes, and Harry Brook’s altercation with a nightclub bouncer in Wellington before that. There was a real lack of transparency around Brook’s incident, which was not revealed to the public until a newspaper discovered and reported it, and that led to a kneejerk reaction when the ECB thought there had been a repeat. All three incidents could have been handled better – it just keeps finding different ways of getting it wrong. At least no one can accuse it of not taking this one seriously, and if it hasn’t truly established its competence it has established that all players are accountable, which will help to set a standard of acceptable behaviour.
In the end it seems there was confusion about the curfew and when it applied that extended even to the captain, who was one of the people who conceived it. That’s really humiliating, most of all for the coach, Brendon McCullum. Coaches don’t get to go on the field and lead by example. They have to get it right off the field, to nail planning and preparation, to get the right staff around the team, and to communicate with absolute clarity. The coaches I’ve worked with of international standard pride themselves on getting those things right. McCullum has admitted his rules were not communicated clearly either in person or in writing, and that reflects poorly on him.
As, of course, does the fact that after four years with him in charge his team’s planning, preparation, mindset and strategy were all exposed on the field in Australia, while their culture was exposed off it. Reflecting on my international career, there were times when our culture wasn’t right and times when it was, but it was never publicly exposed and scrutinised in the way it is now.
England supporters want their team to win, but know they will sometimes lose. That is part of the game and is going to be accepted. But when players – role models – behave in a way that embarrasses the country, they will find that harder to swallow. McCullum and Rob Key, the managing director of the England men’s team, spoke at length about this before the first Test and seemed to believe a new chapter had been started, but what we’ve seen since looked a lot like the same old story.
Where great coaches operate, players know the standards that are expected and the consequences if they fail to meet them. I have written before about my first trip coaching the Lions in 2013, when Stokes and Kent’s Matt Coles were sent home after coming back to the team hotel one night in the early hours. David Parsons was the manager of that trip, and he ran a tight ship. There were consequences for poor behaviour. At the time I thought it was a brave decision, but it sent a powerful message. Everyone knew where they stood from then on, that’s for sure.
I worried that the recent incident could deal a fatal blow to Stokes’s credibility – if a captain wilfully breaks a curfew they themselves helped to implement, how can they be trusted or respected at all? Instead he comes back with it reinforced. He will not be blamed for misunderstanding a rule that hadn’t been properly understood by anyone, while he will get credit for the fact that, when he was in the team for the first Test, they showed so much skill, promise and togetherness, and when he was not in it they went to the other extreme. At the Oval England felt timid. Of course they had a lot of new faces, and it is not a reflection on Joe Root’s interim captaincy, but this is a group with one obvious leader. Now he is back.
This is a strength for as long as Stokes is around, and a concern as soon as he is not. But he is 35, has already been in a tough job for four years, and the time will come when he is gone for good. England are not ready for it. If Root, who like Stokes is 35 and has already done his time, doesn’t want the captaincy, who comes in then?
Brook has been identified as a potential leader, and people talk about his smart cricket brain, but it seems to me he has some work to do if he’s genuinely serious about taking on that kind of position. After that incident in New Zealand, and then soon afterwards celebrating an ODI century by miming Stone Cold Steve Austin’s beer smash, the optics from outside the camp are certainly not good.
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Six Third Test players named in England T20 squad
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Six of the players who assembled in Nottingham on Monday for the deciding third Test against New Zealand have been named in England’s squad for the five-game T20 series against India that starts next Wednesday, potentially less than 24 hours after the game at Trent Bridge draws to a conclusion.
The fixture congestion, combined with the forecast heat which is likely to have an impact on the level of fatigue experienced by players across a five-day Test, has forced selectors to expand their squad from the normal 15 members to 17, giving them more alternatives if they are forced to deal with illness or injury. Harry Brook, England’s white-ball captain and Test vice-captain, is joined in the squad by Rehan Ahmed, Jofra Archer, Jacob Bethell, Jordan Cox and Josh Tongue, as well as by Sonny Baker, who played the second Test at the Oval last week but has been dropped following the returns of Gus Atkinson and Ollie Robinson.
All but two of the 15 members of England’s squad that reached the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup earlier this year – where they were narrowly beaten by India, the eventual champions – are in the squad, the exceptions being Ben Duckett, who never played in that competition and will get a break after playing in the Tests, and the injured Jamie Overton. The Sussex all-rounder James Coles has been called up to a senior England squad for the first time.
“James Coles is an exciting addition and has earned his place following his performances with the England Lions and in T20 competitions here and abroad during the past 12 months,” said Marcus North, England men’s national selector.
It is not just the players who are likely to be impacted by the heat at Trent Bridge this week, and Nottinghamshire have asked fans to “kindly refrain from removing their shirts, however warm it may become”. The Met Office is predicting temperatures of up to 39C on Thursday, the first day of the game, and have issued an amber warning for extreme heat. Thousands of fans travelling from London will also be inconvenienced by the cancellation of all direct trains to Nottingham until the end of Friday at the earliest as a result of last week’s collision in Bedford. National Rail have asked passengers to attempt the journey “only if it is essential”.
Jacob Bethell was also involved both in Noosa and Wellington, but of this squad he and Jamie Smith look to me like outstanding talents who could go on to play a lot of Test matches. If Stokes and McCullum still agree on anything, it should be the need to bring along those two, as well as Brook, and to leave a strong group of leaders as a legacy. Bethell has already had a taste of captaincy with the white-ball side, which was hopefully part of a process.
Cultivate those talents, see if they have the capacity to be serious people, not just young men having fun playing a game with their mates. Just watching Stokes will have taught them all a lot about leadership – and also about the pressures, responsibilities and difficulties that come with taking on that kind of position in the hardest and most brutal format of the game.