The timing is neat. As Eoin Morgan, leader of English cricket’s last revolution, retires, the riotous transformation under two of his great friends, Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, is just taking off.
This was a staggering month of performances from England against New Zealand, with players old and new flying under Stokes’s attack-at-all-costs captaincy and McCullum’s ability to remove pressure from a situation.
Shots were fired, whether from Jonny Bairstow’s belligerent bat, Matt Potts’s relentless right arm or Stokes’s mind, which never rested for a moment.
McCullum believes England have fired a warning-shot around the world game, too. When their hangovers have eased, most England players will travel to Birmingham today ahead of Friday’s Test against India that concludes last summer’s entertaining series. India are no longer captained by the totemic Virat Kohli, but it is England who will look the markedly different side.
“It’ll be quite good fun to look at a new opponent,” said McCullum. “The World Test champions were a formidable opponent to overcome and the alarm bells have probably gone off somewhat around world cricket as to how this team is going to play.”
McCullum and Stokes hope that the alarm bells have gone off around English cricket, too.
“I think these last three games should have sent the message to people who aspire to play Test cricket for England over the next two or three years,” said Stokes.
“I would say it’s the manner that you’re going to play, whether with ball or bat in your hand. Not necessarily your stats, or anything like that, it’s the manner that you play that’s going to be first and foremost on selectors’ minds, because all we want to do is build on this.
“I’d like to think people watching would know what they have to do to bang the door down to get in this team.”
McCullum agreed. “We can’t impose any of that stuff on them [counties] because they’ve got things they want to achieve, but I think you’ll see if we can build this and we have success doing it, you see that type of player,” he said.
“If I was a young player around county cricket and I saw what our No5 for England is currently doing and how he’s encouraged to play that way, then I’d probably look at trying to play like that myself to ensure that I would get noticed as well, in case something was to happen to that person.”
There is a small sample of evidence that it already is. As the rain fell at Headingley yesterday morning, Sam Curran was smashing a 64-ball century, the first of his senior career, for Surrey. They made 673 for seven at 5.2 runs per over against Kent, with Will Jacks’s hundred coming in 92 balls.
Also this week, Northamptonshire have plundered Warwickshire for 451 in 103 overs. In Division Two, at Trent Bridge, Nottinghamshire scored 551 in 132.3 overs against Middlesex, while Derbyshire and Sussex have been rollicking along at more than 3.5 an over at Hove, too.
“I think that we’ve already seen with county cricket scores over the past couple of days that maybe that positivity has filtered down,” added McCullum.
There was much mirth earlier this year, when England’s powers that be — started by Joe Root and Tom Harrison, now both gone from their roles as Test captain and ECB chief executive — harped on about the idea of a “red-ball reset”.
A reset is happening, but not in the manner they were envisaging. They were thinking about structural change to the domestic game, and there are working groups exploring all that now. That would be a bottom-up approach, but this from Stokes and McCullum is top-down — and far more effective.
A reset is happening, but not in the manner England were envisaging
This was the approach Morgan took when revolutionising England’s white-ball cricket in 2015: set an example; add smart tweaks to the domestic system (flat 50-over pitches, in that case); and others will follow. We are seeing it now in the white-ball side. Phil Salt is Jason Roy Mk II, Brydon Carse is bowling with aggression in the middle overs, like Liam Plunkett, wrist-spinners are ever more common.
Stokes cited Jamie Overton’s approach at No8 to England’s first-innings strife and Potts’s constant desire for another over as prime examples of what he wants from new players. Watchful applicants need not apply.
Both men know there will be tougher days ahead, where 55 for six does not result in a seven-wicket win, and some opponents will be less compliant than New Zealand were.
But, as player of the match Jack Leach said, this team already believe no situation is beyond repair. That, as Morgan’s team have shown, is a powerful feeling.
