The diagnosis after England’s Test team hit rock bottom during that wretched Ashes winter of 2021-22 was a pretty shrewd one by Rob Key. Newly hired as director of men’s cricket, Key recognised that the players, good enough but grossly underperforming, had been ground down by the pandemic and its joyless treadmill of fixture fulfilment.
In came Brendon McCullum as the antipodean antidote to their negativity on and off the field. He was not a technical hire – although he analyses more information than the golf-bro image suggests – rather a relentlessly positive one who would double down on the aggressive outlook of Ben Stokes, his new captain, and not meet fire with ice.
Granted, England blew the 2023 Ashes, only getting serious when 2-0 down and incensed by the Lord’s stumping. They also scuppered any shot at the latest World Test Championship by not bowling their overs quickly enough. But for all the memes generated, for all the brain fades and ill-judged public statements, a record of 22 wins and 12 defeats is a ratio bettered only by Australia during this time.
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The question now, as England’s white-ball side limps to its third successive group stage exit at a global event in the last 18 months, is whether expanding McCullum’s role to all three men’s teams – an attempt to breathe life in Jos Buttler’s previously hangdog captaincy – is the same medicine being prescribed for some very different ailments. Buttler has smiled throughout this latest ordeal but his mood was never the issue.
These are early days for McCullum in the all-format role, while English misery on the subcontinent is hardly a new phenomenon. But nine defeats from 10 since starting last month has been less of a new coach bounce and more of pavement pizza. And as inspired as Afghanistan were on the day, the eight-run defeat in Lahore that extinguished England’s Champions Trophy campaign, felt like an accident waiting to happen.
Buttler’s time as white-ball captain is surely over after the South Africa game in Karachi this Saturday. Aged 34, but with hopefully a few more miles on the clock, England need his wristy batting to crackle once again. Michael Vaughan’s batting average, for example, dropped from 51 to 36 as Test skipper but the man management and tactical acumen more than made up the shortfall. Buttler is still popular in the group but, averaging 18 across the last two 50-over tournaments, he cannot remotely say the same.
Buttler’s culpability risks being overplayed however. For one, the squad he was handed was not nearly rounded enough, contrasting wildly with Afghanistan’s wonderfully varied lineup. Where Hashmatullah Shahidi could call on left-arm and right arm-options – both wrist-spin and seam – and a seasoned, orthodox offie in Mohammad Nabi, Butter was dealt an all right-arm pace attack and one frontline spinner in Adil Rashid.
In one sense McCullum is unlucky. His old New Zealand side was blessed with Trent Boult’s class but English cricket is suffering from a dearth of left-arm quicks. The stock of Reece Topley and Sam Curran typically rose on the outer. But Topley struggles once the ball stops swinging, while the more all-round Curran, not quite one thing or the other, is hard to accommodate. McCullum has instead looked to blast teams out but on subcontinental pitches, England’s opponents have been more than equal to it.
The upshot is that in the middle 30 overs of the five ODIs this year, England have gone at 6.4 runs per over and only managed one wicket every 60 balls. Given this is 60% of the time spent in the field, it has handed sides a platform for late hitting. The death bowling, a longer-standing achilles heel, hinged on whether Jofra Archer could deliver but in both outings here the fast bowler faded as the innings went on. Right now, as much as everyone is still willing it, the rigours of Test cricket still feel some way off.
Then there is the balance of a side which, batter-heavy in this Champions Trophy, has been set up on the basis the extra runs outweigh those leaked when cobbling together 10 overs of part-time spin (something further exposed when Mark Wood pulled up lame). There is no genuine all-rounder either, with the nearest England have, Liam Livingstone, still to win a match with the bat across any of his five global tournaments. Against Afghanistan, despite a rapid outfield that Joe Root was nicely exploiting through touch, he fell with 94 needed off 64 trying to marmalise a cut.
This feeds into a sense that, beyond Root’s enduring class, and Ben Duckett’s frisky accumulation, England have forgotten how to pace a 50-over innings, all while the more impressionable members of the team such as Phil Salt and Jamie Smith are being horse-whispered to go hard from the get-go. Twenty20 cricket has this clarity, while the County Championship provides some – not all – of the grooving for Test cricket. But with the 50-Over Cup undercard to the Hundred, the next generation of English white-ball talent is not being exposed to enough of the format in between and is learning on the job.
The route out is not straightforward for Key and McCullum but with the Hundred going nowhere, more 50-over Lions cricket could be scheduled home and abroad. The looming captaincy vacancy is not simple either, with Harry Brook the man in waiting and yet a three-format cricketer with a workload to manage. However much McCullum likes a tight unit, separation of the attacks may also be needed, as shown by Brydon Carse and Mark Wood, both central to the Ashes moonshot next winter, limping out of the tournament.
Having originally turned down the chance to take on the white-ball set-up back in 2022 under a belief it was too well-oiled a machine, McCullum has discovered it is anything but.
