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There should be a simple way for Richard Thompson and Richard Gould to conduct their ‘thorough review’ into what went wrong for England in Australia.
Once the emotions of another heavy Ashes defeat have died down, the ECB chairman and CEO should just sit in a room with Brendon McCullum and Rob Key and ask them the really tough questions that are hanging over this regime.
They should ideally have a cricketer, whether young or old, with them too asking those questions because cricket people respond better to them than administrators.
So often after big Ashes defeats in Australia we have heard ‘rip it all up and start again’ and we end up going round in circles. Someone comes in and does things in a very different way and, four years later, England end up losing heavily in Australia again.
I don’t want to go through that cycle yet again. Every time after the Ashes I hear the same thing. Kick them all out. I want to move away from that, but the only way to do so is to take the good bits of what Ben Stokes, McCullum and Key have implemented but get away from the repetitive nature of all those things that have been going wrong.
Brendon McCullum, Rob Key, selector Luke Wright and Ben Stokes during an England nets session at Perth Stadium (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
I was part of the Schofield Review that was set up by the ECB to look into the 5-0 defeat in Australia in 2006-07, but we had far too wide a brief that included looking at the whole structure of the domestic game.
Then there was Sir Andrew Strauss’s High Performance Review after the last defeat in Australia four years ago which, again, looked at the game from top to bottom.
This should be different.
Get everyone in a room for a day and have some proper discussions about what happened with this team, this squad, this management and this managing director of cricket. What have they learned and what will they change?
To me what’s needed is not a review of English cricket. Just review this England team and this management, and determine if they are willing to learn from their mistakes and make the necessary adjustments to make it better. If they are, then we can progress with the same people in charge. Otherwise the ECB will have to move in a different direction.
Get right into the details. What happened with the preparation? Why did you not play your only warm-up game before the first Test in Perth on a quick, bouncy pitch? What was the story with the WACA? Why weren’t you able to train and prepare there?
The WACA during Western Australia’s Sheffield Shield game against Queensland in November (Paul Kane/Getty Images)
I interviewed McCullum for Sky after the final Test and he said: “Hold on, there are some half-truths about that. We asked for the WACA and Cricket Australia said no.”
If they said no, why didn’t McCullum and Key reply: “Hang on, we’re the England cricket team. We want the WACA and we’re going to kick up a fuss if we don’t get it.”
And if that really wasn’t possible, Thompson and Gould should ask them why they didn’t have a Plan B. Why didn’t they find somewhere else where they could get the proper preparation required to play on one of the quickest and bounciest pitches in the world at the Optus Stadium rather than playing among themselves on a slow, low surface at Lilac Hill.
Another question near the top of the list should be: “What happened with Shoaib Bashir? You played on two pitches in Australia that spun, at Adelaide and Sydney, and the spinner you’ve lined up for almost three years was nowhere to be seen.”
Also, what happened with Zak Crawley? Why have you got an opening batter who has now played 64 Tests and averages 31 when so much of his selection was about his ability to thrive against Australian bowling in Australian conditions?
What is the story with Matt Potts? How was he thrown into the Sydney Test with so little preparation and asked to do a job he wasn’t suited to? Why did Brydon Carse keep taking the new ball when it’s not his strength?
My abiding memory of this Ashes is Travis Head pulling, cutting and upper-cutting the ball for four or six which suggests that, while Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland were bowling at the stumps, England were bowling halfway down the pitch.
Another Travis Head cut shot. Another Travis Head boundary (Santanu Banik/MB Media/Getty Images)
Is anyone questioning the shots many batters keep on playing? Key, the managing director himself, called them dumb after Adelaide and two games later the likes of Jamie Smith and Will Jacks were still playing dumb shots. Why? How is that happening?
Where is the accountability? What is being said after Smith, Jacks and, earlier, Harry Brook, Ollie Pope and others have played these dumb shots?
McCullum told me that we on the outside world don’t know what is being said in the dressing room, and that’s a fair point. I know it can be different to what is being said in public.
David Lloyd was very good at that when he was our England coach. He would tear strips off us in the dressing room but then back us to the hilt when he faced the press. Maybe McCullum is the same.
England’s batters should look at how Joe Root does it in their side and Steve Smith does it in the Australian team. One batter who did was Jacob Bethell, who provided a masterclass in how to play shots at the right time in Sydney. How to leave, how to defend and how to put pressure back on bowlers. It was a lesson from a 22-year-old in how to play.
There has been so much emphasis in how England should play. How they have to go hard and, if that doesn’t work, go harder. I’m not interested in how the batters play but how many runs they get, and Bethell just seemed to say: “I’m playing my way”.
Jacob Bethell square drives en route to his glorious 154 at the SCG (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Bethell needs to be a staple of the red-ball side now, but that in itself will create problems for England. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have told Indian Premier League (IPL) owners they will not take their players away during the tournament while the IPL themselves have said they will ban any players who pull out of contracts for two years.
Bethell is playing for the most watched franchise in world cricket, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, in the best and richest cricket tournament in the world and is in the same dressing room as the likes of Virat Kohli and Andy Flower.
Why wouldn’t he want to be there making a lot of money for years to come? So it is inevitable he will return to England this summer just before the first Test against New Zealand in June without having played any red-ball cricket.
Then there’s the Hundred which is now under private ownership. It is written in contracts that England players have to play in it. Key won’t have any control over that.
That means if Bethell or any other England player’s team get to the final, they will also turn up for the first Test against Pakistan in August without any red-ball cricket under their belt.
It is going to be difficult for multi-format players to squeeze everything in as the game moves on, but Bethell’s dad Graham did say this week in Sydney how much Jacob loves red-ball cricket. So we can only hope his boy finds the right balance.
Players have to take responsibility for what has happened in Australia. These are not novices. When I played nothing spurred me on more than watching Mike Atherton or Graham Thorpe making a hundred. I would say: “I want to do that”.
The most inspirational thing for those who have under-performed now would be to watch how Bethell did it.
Ben Stokes has acknowledged that Jacob Bethell set a standard at the SCG (Philip Brown/Getty Images)
The questions go on. Why did England not listen to some of those who have been there and done it before, the ‘has-beens’ as Stokes called them, who were saying you need better preparation when there was still time to put it in place?
And how can England, with all their resources and finances, go to the Ashes without a fielding coach?
McCullum said to me they couldn’t get one because they all want to go off and work in franchise cricket. Really? Are we at the stage where England and the ECB couldn’t find a suitable fielding coach?
How is your main fast bowling coach, Tim Southee, playing in a franchise tournament during the biggest Test series of them all? England ended up dragging in David Saker at the last minute and, while he’s an excellent coach, that smacks of bad planning.
England bowling coach David Saker in discussion with Brendon McCullum ahead of day four at Sydney (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Then, after all the questions, Thompson and Gould must say: “Right, how are you going to change it? Do you agree, Brendon, that you need to change? Because, if you do, what are you going to change and how can we help you do it?”
McCullum said before the tour this was going to be the biggest series of England’s lives, but the trouble was they simply weren’t set up to succeed.
When the coach first came in England did need that carefree attitude, to go out and express themselves, and Brendon’s mantra of “plan as if you’ll live forever, but live as if you’ll die tomorrow”. It was very successful and it was a joy to watch, but they haven’t evolved.
McCullum took umbrage when I asked him on Thursday if he was willing to change. His point was that he has always been prepared to evolve, but whether he means it will be key now. He is right to have conviction in his methodology, but there also needs to be a realisation that he and England need to adapt at times.
Will he be happy for someone above to tell him he has to change? He will have to be if he wants to stay in the job. Then he will have to demonstrate that he really is willing to do so and get other voices in his dressing room.
Mike Atherton said in the Times that Sir Alastair Cook should come in as assistant coach. Whoever it may be, will McCullum accept that there’s a different way to do things?
The issue for me is that, whoever comes in, it cannot create mixed messaging in the dressing room and the assistant saying to the players: “I don’t agree with what Brendon just said there”.
When Duncan Fletcher became England coach, one of the first things he said to me was he needed my loyalty. Even if we might be disagreeing behind the scenes, we always had to be seen to be singing from the same hymn sheet in public. We stuck to that for four years and you do need that trust.
Duncan Fletcher and Nasser Hussain always gave a united front in public (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
The Twenty20 World Cup that begins in India next month has to be a good one for McCullum and Key if they want to survive. It has become incredibly important for them because you can’t have both the red and white-ball teams misfiring badly at the same time.
I hope they do survive because my preference is for a refined ‘Bazball’ to be in place in June, but they need a good World Cup for that to happen. And for McCullum and Key to be willing to adjust.
England have to be ruthless now with players who have consistently let them down, as Stokes said at the SCG he will be.
If you ask me whose stock has risen during this Ashes I would say Bethell, Josh Tongue, Jofra Archer and maybe Brydon Carse. Root is Root and just did what he does. Joe was able to get the monkey off his back of not scoring a hundred in Australia in this series and he remains integral to everything England do.
I remain largely happy with the way Brook plays, but he does have to have a look at himself on the field with some of his shot selection, and off it with news that he is on a final warning about his behaviour from England after an incident outside a nightclub in New Zealand. That was not what they needed at the end of a long and difficult tour.
Stokes did not have his best series as captain. There were times when he wasn’t where he needed to be tactically, but for me he is absolutely the future of this side.
He should remain as captain, but it’s now about whether McCullum and Key can adapt, have some accountability and take the England team forward with him.
There has to be change. You cannot retain the status quo when you have just lost to an Australian side without some of its all-time great bowlers.
This has been a huge missed opportunity and England messed up. Thompson and Gould need to sit with McCullum and Key in that room and ask why they messed up, and how they are going to put it right.
Then we will see if they can carry on.