{"id":764445,"date":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/764445\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","slug":"someones-about-to-switch-the-music-off-leaving-rob-key-without-a-chair-to-sit-on-england-cricket-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/764445\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone\u2019s about to switch the music off, leaving Rob Key without a chair to sit on | England cricket team"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 00s, when the internet was the place you went to watch babies bite their big brother\u2019s finger, find out what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast or follow the Test on your holiday with those two blokes who did the Guardian\u2019s over-by-over<\/a>, someone made a gif of Rob Key, the memory of which will be instantly familiar to anyone who saw it, even two decades later.<\/p>\n

Key was wearing a pair of leather boots and waving a cricket bat about his head while riding on the back of a capybara<\/a>. There was no point trying to understand the joke. It was just that it was Key. And Key was funny.<\/p>\n

Key got it. He was that sort of sportsman, one of the last cult heroes of the county circuit, red-faced and out-of-shape, with a sense of humour so dry you could use his punchlines as kindling. Asked what advice he would give himself at 18, Key answered: \u201cDon\u2019t eat biscuits.\u201d The best thing about playing at Canterbury was \u201cthere\u2019s a Sainsbury\u2019s<\/a> at the ground\u201d. He was a smart captain and a sound batter who regularly scored a thousand runs a summer, a better player than even he seemed to realise.<\/p>\n

Key laughed at his own international career, which included a double century at Lord\u2019s and a second spell as part of a crack squad of county specialists selected for the World T20 who ended up losing to the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

It makes sense, then, that his stint as the managing director of England men\u2019s cricket has ended up as one long meme. Having said: \u201cDobbing it on a length at 75mph with the keeper up doesn\u2019t work in Test cricket,\u201d Key has spent the next two years watching England lose to teams doing exactly that while the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm plays in the background.<\/p>\n

Someone is about to switch the music off and the suspicion is that when they do Key is going to be the one man in this England regime left without a chair to sit on.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, Ben Stokes<\/a> was being lined up to be the man left standing. But the public reaction persuaded the England and Wales Cricket Board that a popularity contest with the most iconic English player of the past 50 years wasn\u2019t the smartest idea, a point Stokes underlined for them when he spoke at length about just how much public support he\u2019d been given. Besides which, if there\u2019s one of the three men in the leadership team England can do without, it\u2019s probably not the one with 250 wickets and 7,250 runs.<\/p>\n

Ben Stokes is in a position of strength having taken 250 wickets and scored 7,250 runs. Photograph: Manjit Narotra\/ProSports\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Instead, the blame for all this mess seems to have fallen on the credibility of the team curfew, which, according to reports, was systematically dismantled by Stokes\u2019s management team on the grounds it hadn\u2019t been properly written down. Read between the lines of Stokes\u2019s statement about the curfew: \u201cIf you look at the investigations that happened, both internally and with the regulator, nothing was brought against me and Gus in terms of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mistake was in the direction and management, which, to be fair, probably comes under the purview of the managing director. Key is at Trent Bridge but hasn\u2019t been on public duties since he gave a press conference before the second Test. Meanwhile, England\u2019s new national selector, Marcus North, director of cricket at Durham for the past eight years, has been doing the media rounds all week and even joined in with the team huddle before the start of the Test.<\/p>\n

North is close to Stokes and he spoke at some length about how much he thinks of Brendon McCullum<\/a>, England\u2019s head coach. It\u2019s a shame there aren\u2019t any recent examples of someone with a power base up north coming down to take things over with the help of a few well-placed allies we could use to illuminate what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

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McCullum? Well, don\u2019t let his easy manner kid you into thinking he doesn\u2019t know how to handle himself in political row. Go ask Ross Taylor, his predecessor as New Zealand captain<\/a>, or any number of others who have shared a dressing room with him over the years. Stokes has just defended McCullum and North has already said what a great first impression he has made on him in the few weeks they have been colleagues.<\/p>\n

Judging by reports of what it would cost the ECB<\/a> to get rid of McCullum if the team lose this series against New Zealand, they have at least a million-and-one reasons for keeping him. It\u2019s just that the least convincing of them is that he is the right man to teach this next generation of English players how to go about Test cricket.<\/p>\n

Key has made plenty of mistakes, most glaringly in the way he has mismanaged England\u2019s central contracts and mishandled relations with a lot of the players dropped along the way, but you wonder if his biggest may turn out to be not taking all this more seriously. Like they say, if you can\u2019t spot the fall guy at the table, it\u2019s because it\u2019s you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 00s, when the internet was the place you went to watch babies bite their big brother\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-764445","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\/764445","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=764445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}