Brendon McCullum and Rob Key have been backed to lead England\u2019s response to the winter\u2019s grisly Ashes defeat in Australia, with Richard Gould, chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, insisting that while it may not be a popular decision, it is the right one.<\/p>\n
At Lord\u2019s on Monday, and with Key, the managing director of cricket, sitting next to him, Gould stressed that lessons have been learned from the 4-1 defeat and that the head coach in particular is willing to \u201cadapt\u201d and \u201cevolve\u201d his style. Even with an appetite for change among the public, the status quo holds, as exclusively revealed by the Guardian<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n Gould said: \u201cThere is [that] sentiment in some parts and we do keep a very close eye on all of our supporters. But neither are we going to select or deselect management based on a popularity campaign. We\u2019re going to do it based on good judgment and objective views.<\/p>\n \u201cMy old man was a football manager [the former Wimbledon and Wales coach Bobby Gould] and sacking was part of the job. But it didn\u2019t necessarily do the right thing. Moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do. That\u2019s not the route we\u2019re going to take.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen the driving ambition and determination we\u2019re lucky enough to have within our leadership group to take the lessons from the Ashes. It may not be the popular route, it may not be the easiest route, but I think it\u2019s the right route.\u201d<\/p>\n While an internal two-month review into the Ashes gives the impression of the ECB<\/a> marking its own homework, Gould, without naming names, said he had spoken to outsiders. The review will not be published, although two slides with bullet points were presented to the media.<\/p>\n One was essentially a list of names in the selection process, the other being areas of particular focus. These included better use of the performance system, better long-term planning and improved culture and environment ie greater professionalism in the senior men\u2019s set-up.<\/p>\n The latter became an acute talking point over the winter, including the mid-Ashes break in Noosa that invited headlines about drinking<\/a>. It then came to head when it was revealed that Harry Brook had been disciplined for a drunken altercation with a nightclub bouncer<\/a> in New Zealand the evening before he was due to captain England in a one-day international.<\/p>\n Gould described it as \u201csignificantly unprofessional\u201d, while Key said that while he considered sacking Brook as white-ball captain, his previous clean slate in this regard \u2013 plus the decision to put England ahead of playing in the Indian Premier League \u2013 called for a second chance.<\/p>\n The upshot during the second half of the winter was the introduction of a midnight curfew, something Gould said simply formalised McCullum\u2019s belief that nothing good ever comes from being out late. \u201cWe want to give people the freedom to make their own decisions, but sometimes we also need to provide them with more strict parameters.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of performance, Key put plenty of stock in the recent appointment of Troy Cooley, who worked with quick bowlers in the 2005 Ashes-winning side and returns to oversee the fast-bowling landscape more broadly. There was also an acceptance that communication with the counties needs to improve, with various directors of cricket invited to a meeting this week. \u201cYou just want to lift English cricket up as much as you can in all departments,\u201d Key said.<\/p>\n As regards the Test team, there was an admission from Key that McCullum and Ben Stokes, the captain, had different outlooks at times \u2013 McCullum more aggressive, Stokes more conservative \u2013 but this was healthy. \u201cThere\u2019s been no big argument, no big bust up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s always trying, when you\u2019re under pressure, especially against a very good side, to be able to make decisions and help people perform under the toughest conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve really all agreed on now is that we don\u2019t want a massive change of style. We don\u2019t want a change of philosophy so you\u2019re asking Brendon McCullum to be someone completely different. Because as a leader, if you\u2019re not authentic, you\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendon McCullum and Rob Key have been backed to lead England\u2019s response to the winter\u2019s grisly Ashes defeat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-559445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559445","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=559445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}