a County Insight Group<\/a> comprising head coaches that will regularly meet England\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\nIf Key and McCullum have not been held accountable for their contributions to England\u2019s failure in the Ashes, a couple of players have after a period when there was too much loyalty shown.<\/p>\n
So where does McCullum stand now, after the team\u2019s style of play, their culture, their planning, their preparation, their strategy, as well as the players\u2019 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.<\/p>\nThe England head coach, Brendon McCullum (right), speaks with the managing director of men\u2019s cricket Rob Key, during a training session at SCG in January this year.<\/span> Photograph: Gareth Copley\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI sometimes struggle to see the best in McCullum. In 2006, I did my level four coaching course, the ECB\u2019s top qualification, aimed at professional coaches. One of the first things we were taught was that even before you open your mouth you\u2019re saying a lot, by the way you dress and the way you conduct yourself, your punctuality, the example you set.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cwithin a bee\u2019s dick of getting a win\u201d, it makes me shudder. I don\u2019t think any of this means he is a bad coach, but I\u2019m always fighting to control the unconscious bias he triggers in me.<\/p>\n
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\u2019m not sure he has tried to create that kind of environment with England.<\/p>\nMcCullum 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\nHis messaging will also have to change. For four years he\u2019s been talking about running towards the danger, but now it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s why he\u2019s a very lucky guy to still have a job. But that doesn\u2019t mean the pressure\u2019s off when New Zealand and Pakistan visit this summer. Expectations will be high: I think we\u2019ll comprehensively beat Pakistan, but the Black Caps will be a good litmus test.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a young, evolving side any more. It\u2019s 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\u00a0come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a quote from Legacy, James Kerr\u2019s book about the All Blacks, that I have always liked: \u201cOur values decide our character, our character decides our value.\u201d As England\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6803],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}