“Inspire and entertain”. Since he took over as England head coach in November 2022, that has been the mantra from Jon Lewis. Players have been encouraged to embrace and defend his philosophy, as Sophia Dunkley did in Sydney, after England surrendered the Ashes. “It’s important that we keep our eyes focused on how we want to play as a team and how we want to come across,” she said. In other words, you can lose the Ashes, but if you do it in spectacular Jon‑ball fashion, no one will mind too much. Well, here we are two weeks later at 16-0 and, funnily enough, people do seem to mind.
Perhaps if you’re Australian you might have been entertained by the sight of England fielding like clowns on day two of the Melbourne Test. Maybe if you were teaching a seminar on “1,000 ways to lose a cricket match”, you would have found watching England over the past three weeks inspirational. For everyone else, the “inspire and entertain” refrain now rings completely hollow. After all, the word “inspirational” in its literal sense means to “fill people with hope or encourage them”. Watching England mess up a run‑chase or fumble easy catches has precisely the opposite effect.
