{"id":388742,"date":"2026-01-03T09:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T09:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/388742\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T09:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T09:58:09","slug":"england-captain-ben-stokes-brushes-off-concerns-over-brendon-mccullum-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/388742\/","title":{"rendered":"England captain Ben Stokes brushes off concerns over Brendon McCullum relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Stokes<\/a> and Brendon McCullum<\/a> have been at the forefront of this current era of English cricket – but a difficult Ashes<\/a> tour hasn’t impacted their relationship.<\/p>\n

The pair have stood side by side for many years, leading the charge for the Bazball philosophy that has brought about mixed results at Test level.<\/p>\n

After going down 3-0 in the series against Australia, the finger-point started to go into overdrive and many were calling for McCullum to be ousted as coach.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Smith defends Khawaja after ‘racial stereotypes’ claim<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Kyrgios fires back at former star over wildcard claims<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely staggered’: Vaughan fumes after bizarre reveal<\/a><\/p>\n

Stokes has also found himself under scrutiny in what is his third-straight losing Test tour of Australia and he’s highly unlikely to make the trip in 2029.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Despite the walls closing in on the England leaders with one match remaining, Stokes denied the sentiment that his partnership with McCullum had waned in any way.<\/p>\n

“No, I don’t think so,” he told media on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

“We’ve always been very forth with each other. That’s why the relationship that we built, not only in a professional capacity, works really well.<\/p>\n

“We are pretty good mates away from cricket as well now, but we have always been two people who have always challenged each other.<\/p>\n

“That hasn’t changed on this trip, we do discuss quite a lot about stuff behind the scenes – without discussions, I don’t feel like you get anywhere.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t say our relationship has really changed at all.”<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old also told English media heading into the fifth Test that he didn’t want anybody else by his side moving forward than McCullum.<\/p>\n

“There is no doubt in my mind that me and Brendon are the right people to carry on doing this for the near future,” Stokes said.<\/p>\n

“I can’t see there being someone else who could take this team from where we are now to even bigger heights.”<\/p>\n

Stokes also batted away question marks about his own legacy, which was a topic of discussion leading into the Ashes after previous captains had failed to win here.<\/p>\n

\"England<\/p>\n

England captain Ben Stokes.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“The time for all that stuff isn’t now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve still got a big game to play and we’ve got a big gap between our next Test series … all the legacy stuff, it’s all external.”<\/p>\n

England have named a 12-man group for the last match of the series, which begins on Sunday morning at the SCG.<\/p>\n

Shoaib Bashir and Matthew Potts are the two possible inclusions in the XI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have been at the forefront of this current era of English cricket –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-388742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}