Brendon McCullum said something telling during his appearance on Stuart Broad’s For the Love of Cricket podcast back in September. Broad asked McCullum why he chose to take on the challenge of reviving England’s failing Test team when ECB managing director Rob Key called in the spring of 2022, rather than becoming England’s white-ball coach, which seemed a more natural fit.
“I looked at where the white-ball side was at,” McCullum replied. “You’re trying to take the team from good to great, and they’re not really my skills, as such. My skills are more about giving a team a bit of soul and trying to give them some purpose and give them some freedom and push them towards a bit of bravery and courage out on the field. I felt the Test team was more aligned to that.”
It was a window into how McCullum sees himself: motivator, rebuilder, giving direction to a group who look lost.
McCullum has given England all of those things in his three and a half years. He set the players a clear mission to entertain, to play for the thrill of it, like they did as kids in the back garden. Winning was important, but it counted for little if they didn’t send home the crowd with a story to tell.
Chasing down 299 to beat New Zealand at Trent Bridge; scoring 657 in Rawalpindi; chasing down 371 to beat India at Headingley. England transitioned away from the Anderson-Broad axis. Joe Root bloomed into the best batter in the world. And all the while McCullum managed to make the England head coach role look cool, a job never before done in a backwards cap, conducting pitch-side interviews in sliders and shades as if he’d just been bothered from his afternoon nap by the pool.
But as England lick their wounds, 2-0 down in Australia after only six days of cricket, perhaps the Test team are now in the place where McCullum assessed the white-ball side to be back in 2022: needing guidance to go from good to great, a task he admitted was not within his natural skillset. Bazball is an ethos, not a gameplan. England are a side in need of honing, via strategic thinking and attention to detail, rather than an overarching vision of what Test cricket can be if you swing the bat hard enough.
In the months before England travelled to Australia for their victorious 2010-11 Ashes campaign, head coach Andy Flower and captain Andrew Strauss arranged a series of lunches with past England players to pick their brains about what it takes to win Down Under. The nuggets of knowledge gleaned from those conversations formed the foundation of their plan for the tour.
It is hard to imagine the same deep, methodical preparation went into this series. Indeed, Stokes labelled England’s past greats “has-beens” before the first Test.
McCullum has given England clarity in how they go about their cricket, and it should not be forgotten just how poor they were before his arrival, under the more prosaic coaching of Chris Silverwood. “Obviously, it’s better taking over a team that’s struggling,” McCullum told Broad’s podcast. “You were one [win] in 17 at the time.”
But he has not managed to alleviate this team’s glaring flaw, which is to largely ignore the natural ebbs and flows of a Test match, failing to recognise the moments when bat or ball is in the ascendancy and apply themselves accordingly. Particularly with the bat, England’s apparent c’est la vie attitude has been infuriating to watch.
They are about to head to Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast for some downtime, and the stag-do optics of England players surfing and golfing on the back of two harrowing defeats will not be good. McCullum only compounded the issue by claiming England trained “too much” for the second Test in Brisbane, a contentious comment likely to rile up their critics, even if he believes it.
Ashes tours have a habit of ending careers and McCullum is not the only one under scrutiny right now. Ollie Pope is among a few players clinging on to their place and perhaps their Test future. Key’s role at the ECB will come into question if England continue to flounder. A time will come for some big-picture decisions after the dust has settled on the series. But, win or lose from here, perhaps McCullum’s gift – to instil “soul”, “freedom” and “courage” in a group of players, in his words – is not what England need any more. Maybe Bazball’s mission has reached a natural endpoint.
