Inside Brendon McCullum’s reprieve as England back coach after Ashes failure

The players had been given too much rope by McCullum and Rob Key and inevitably one or two took advantage, culminating in Harry Brook being punched by a bouncer in Wellington in the early hours before he was due to captain England in a one-day international. McCullum only found out halfway through the one-dayer that England lost.

The decision to not name Jacob Bethell and Josh Tongue as Brook’s accomplices that night further questioned the team management’s handling of the issue when Telegraph Sport revealed all three were being investigated by the Cricket Regulator.

There were players in the Ashes who felt McCullum was naturally drawn to those like him who enjoy a beer, a vape and a round of golf. Unintentionally it created a clique that became more apparent under the stress of an Ashes loss and there were players who felt a non-serious environment had cost them the opportunity of a lifetime in Australia.

The mid-tour break to Noosa was ill-conceived and naive, when the players needed to get away from the glare of Ashes cricket. It was a bad look at 3-0 down with video circulating of an inebriated Ben Duckett.

The players had been encouraged by the management to be out and about and not hide away, despite the shenanigans in Wellington. They based themselves in a bar – Rococo Bistro – because it is the place in Noosa where punters can vape in public areas outside. McCullum vapes and it is a habit that has swept through the squad.

Those days are over. New drinking rules were circulated by Key, the director of cricket, in January. Seen by Telegraph Sport, the players will be disciplined if they are drunk in public, they must not put on social media anything to do with drinking alcohol and must tell the management their location after 9pm. There is a midnight curfew.

McCullum accepted those regulations in Sri Lanka. There was barely a week’s gap between the end of the Sydney test and England landing in Sri Lanka. It gave McCullum an opportunity to prove to the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) he was willing to change. Had there been a hole in England’s calendar, and a gap until the summer, McCullum would not have had the chance to fight for his job. Instead, little over a week after the Ashes, he was in Colombo.

At first observers thought he looked withdrawn, and not his usual energetic self, at nets, especially after they lost the opening ODI. But they bounced back to win the series based on Joe Root’s runs and cruised in the T20s.

Having carefully guarded his close circle of assistants, McCullum agreed for Carl Hopkinson to join the tour as fielding coach following a string of dropped catches in the Ashes.

Hopkinson had been made redundant by the ECB a year earlier after McCullum took control of the white-ball team and did not click with him. Now Hopkinson was back on a freelance basis and England’s fielding practice was much sharper.

As revealed by Telegraph Sport in January, Key was assured very early on in the process that he would keep his job. He is fortunate that the ECB leadership sees his role as an eight-year appointment, which is backing that his predecessors have not enjoyed.

He and McCullum grew apart for the first time in Australia. Key, like Ben Stokes, felt England had to play smarter cricket. McCullum must have felt he was being lined up as a fall guy. But two days of talks between Key and McCullum at the start of the World Cup were vital.

Key laid out changes being planned and McCullum felt backed again. Also, the ECB could see he was building a strong bond with Brook, a player he brought through as an England cricketer, and who was showing progress as a character after the low ebb of Wellington.

England’s opening match at the World Cup against Nepal flirted with disaster. They won by four runs thanks to Sam Curran’s death-over bowling. The following day there was an ECB board meeting. Defeat in that game would surely have hardened attitudes towards McCullum.

But the World Cup went relatively well – plans came to fruition. Will Jacks was a success at No 7, Liam Dawson did his bit, Brook moved to No 3 and scored a match-winning hundred against Pakistan and Bethell continued to mature.

However, England still lost the match that mattered. They melted under pressure in the semi-final against India. Archer was expensive, Brook dropped a sitter in the field and failed to score any significant runs. Bethell’s hundred was a silver lining.

Still, there was enough for McCullum to show the white-ball team had turned a corner after a dismal period, and that he was prepared to change some of his methods – which had once seemed so rigid.

In the meantime, Stokes submitted his Ashes report, which was uncommissioned, and it is understood he put the blame for the defeat on McCullum and the management of the tour. In fact, the two men pointed the finger at each other at times during the review.

There was no stand-up row in Australia, they did not fall out and remained on good terms personally. But there was a difference of opinion in how to approach the tests. Stokes wanted England to be more watchful, McCullum felt that confused the players. Stokes would ignore advice from McCullum on the field and do things his way. They were no longer aligned.

But this was not going to be a binary choice between the captain and coach. Stokes is 35 this year, his batting form has tailed off, his captaincy in Australia was strange at times and his fitness is unreliable. Sacking McCullum is risky when Brook, the vice-captain, has a good relationship with the coach and could end up in charge of the test team very soon because Stokes’s battered body could give up at any time.

McCullum accepted responsibility for some of the errors in Australia, Stokes a lot less so but talks appear to have led to an arrangement. Stokes is satisfied by plans to prepare better, and be more adaptable on the field.

This new understanding could be stress-tested very soon in the first series of the summer against a handy New Zealand side that are never easy to beat.

For the ECB there was the financial issue. And the chaos of mass sackings. McCullum is contracted for another 18 months. It would be expensive to sack him and hire a new coach, possibly two with the roles split again. Franchise cricket pays well and comes with less scrutiny and time on the road.

McCullum has been told he needs to do more media – he rarely speaks, and generally only after defeats which inevitably leads to a more confrontational experience for him. The scrutiny that comes with the England job, compared to playing for New Zealand, has been a shock. He ended his Ashes tour with a tetchy interview with Nasser Hussain on Sky and this England set-up is very sensitive to criticism and constantly worried about what the players say in public.

It led to a gagging order last week preventing players talking at county pre-season media days. It was quickly lifted but revealed a failure, even after the Ashes defeat, to recognise they need to use the media to speak to supporters, and win them over again.

The relationship with the counties must be repaired, too. It is hard to find a county director of cricket who backs McCullum and Key. The rift is genuine and while England may not care too much about what counties think of them, the game needs uniting in time for the next Ashes series. Australian cricket attacks England with a co-ordinated effort every four years. England must do the same. Ed Barney, the performance director, appears likely to take on some of this load, rebuilding relationships with the counties.

A couple of crucial appointments loom. One is the new “national selector”, replacing Luke Wright. The advert, posted this week, says the role will be “responsible for leading selection”, which suggests it is a more senior appointment than Wright, who was merely part of a panel, rather than leading it.

Liam Livingstone’s criticism this week of Key and McCullum suggests that communication with contracted players needs work, too. The other key appointment is to the ECB board, where there simply has not been enough cricket nous to hold the team to account. Head-hunters have been approaching legends of the English game over this position, although the start date for the role is May, which meant they were never going to be involved in the post-Ashes review.

The mistakes of the Ashes can never be made up, but they can be learnt from. England are at least organising warm-up matches against local opposition on all three test tours (South Africa, Bangladesh, and the one-off match against Australia) this winter, which should help.

They will even play a pink-ball warm up before the ceremonial test at the MCG to celebrate test cricket’s 150th anniversary next March. It is something they dismissed in the Ashes.

That tour damaged everyone. The opening partnership will probably be split up, Brook has a lot to prove on and off the field, Stokes is showing his age and the bowling lacks a leader, in fact it looks weaker than it has for years.

Richard Gould, the ECB chief executive, and Richard Thompson, the chairman, have arguably taken the riskiest option because there would have been little public backlash to sacking McCullum and Key. But they have stuck by their men. It is on them now.

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