{"id":495586,"date":"2026-03-26T02:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T02:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495586\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T02:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T02:14:14","slug":"brendon-mccullum-should-have-been-sacked-this-england-set-up-is-like-saturday-afternoon-cricket-steve-harmison-takes-aim-at-ecb-bosses-for-sticking-with-under-fire-coach-and-names-the-player-they","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495586\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Brendon McCullum should have been sacked. This England set-up is like Saturday afternoon cricket’: STEVE HARMISON takes aim at ECB bosses for sticking with under-fire coach, and names the player they MUST axe after Ashes debacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Harmison, the former Test fast bowler who once coached his home town Ashington in the lower reaches of English football, reaches for a familiar frame of reference as he tries to make sense of Brendon McCullum.<\/p>\n

\u2018The accountability for the Ashes<\/a> should have been on the coach,\u2019 he says. \u2018In football, McCullum would have been sacked. His charismatic character, the way he is as a person, the way he has been around the English game, has meant he\u2019s kept his job.\u2019<\/p>\n

Harmison is speaking to\u00a0Daily Mail Sport\u00a0the day after ECB chief executive Richard Gould confirmed English cricket\u2019s worst-kept secret: that McCullum would stay on as all-format coach, despite the debacle in Australia<\/a>. And Harmison is adamant it is the wrong decision.<\/p>\n

\u2018Having a coach who says he\u2019s not going to apologise for running an \u201cinformal operation\u201d\u2026 I mean \u201cinformal\u201d is Saturday afternoon cricket,\u2019 Harmison says. \u2018That\u2019s not elite sport. And I look at the way England have gone in the last 18 months: their captain\u2019s trying to do one thing, their coach wants them to do something different.<\/p>\n

\u2018Rob Key looked a bit shattered. I thought he answered the questions brilliantly at Lord\u2019s on Monday, but is he caught between a rock and a hard place by wanting to back McCullum and keep everybody on the same song sheet? I still think they should have sacked him.<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t buy the idea that we turned a bit of a corner when we went to Sri Lanka before the World Cup. I mean, look at that Sri Lankan side \u2013 I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n

\"Brendon <\/p>\n

Brendon McCullum has kept his job as England coach despite the Ashes debacle<\/p>\n

\"Former <\/p>\n

Former fast bowler Steve Harmison is baffled by the decision. ‘The buck stops with the coach,’ he says. ‘I wonder if we\u2019ve just dug a bigger hole\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018It comes back to the fact that I think somebody needed to lose their job because of the planning for Australia. The buck stops with the coach. I wonder if we\u2019ve just dug a bigger hole.\u2019<\/p>\n

Harmison, now 47, would love to help turn round the fortunes of the side he represented in 63 Tests and 58 ODIs, taking over 300 wickets in all. He believes there is serious talent in the English game, and says he remains optimistic about the future, especially following the emergence of Jacob Bethell. But he has twice applied to be a national selector \u2013 and twice failed.<\/p>\n

The first time, more than a decade ago, was a farce: the ECB didn\u2019t believe it was him, later prompting an embarrassed phone call from managing director Paul Downton. The second time was in 2022, not long after Ben Stokes and McCullum joined forces, when \u2013 according to Harmison \u2013 \u2018Rob was looking for somebody who probably wasn\u2019t going to challenge them\u2019.<\/p>\n

Older and wiser, Harmison says he\u2019s going to shoulder arms to the latest vacancy, brought about by the resignation of Luke Wright, because he believes his criticisms of the England set-up, mainly as a pundit with talkSPORT, have scuppered any chance.<\/p>\n

\u2018What I\u2019ve been saying, and how I\u2019ve been saying it, would go against me,\u2019 he says. One comment in particular on the\u00a0Stick to Cricket\u00a0podcast about the England management\u2019s treatment of fast bowler Mark Wood, another Ashington lad, went down like a bucket of cold sick. Harmison said England were\u00a0‘negligent’ regarding Wood and his injuries.<\/p>\n

But Harmison would certainly have points to make around the selection table, and uses hard stats to back up his contention that England must drop Zak Crawley: \u2018The top three run-scorers in Division One of the Championship last summer were all openers. Dom Sibley got 1,274 runs, Haseeb Hameed 1,258 and Adam Lyth 1,173.<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t think Brendon will see a great deal of English county cricket before the first Test against New Zealand, when he needs possibly a new wicketkeeper, possibly an opening bowler, and definitely an opening batter.\u2019<\/p>\n

He thinks England\u2019s wicketkeeper Jamie Smith should go on loan to another county if Surrey aren\u2019t going to give him the gloves, and that Essex seamer Sam Cook \u2013 yet to add to the single cap he won last summer against Zimbabwe \u2013 should be the steady opening bowler England need in home conditions, taking the new ball with Jofra Archer, and allowing Josh Tongue, Brydon Carse and Stokes to charge in with fire and pace.<\/p>\n

\"Harmison <\/p>\n

Harmison says it should be the end of the England road for opener Zak Crawley<\/p>\n

\"And <\/p>\n

And that Jamie Smith should leave Surrey on loan if they won’t let him keep wicket\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for Shoaib Bashir, the young off-spinner England groomed for 18 months before ignoring him in Australia, Harmison says he should spend time working on his game with Derbyshire. He believes Liam Dawson or the uncapped Sussex all-rounder James Coles can do a job in the meantime.<\/p>\n

And if not McCullum, then who? \u2018Andy Flower,\u2019 says Harmison, with little hesitation, citing the work he has done on the T20 franchise circuit as proof he can succeed with England again, more than a decade after his first stint.<\/p>\n

Harmison\u2019s reluctance to apply for the selector\u2019s job will deprive the ECB of some in-house trenchancy. But it won\u2019t stop him holding English cricket to account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Harmison, the former Test fast bowler who once coached his home town Ashington in the lower reaches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1723,1721,97,1722,217,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-495586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-ben-stokes","9":"tag-cricket","10":"tag-dailymail","11":"tag-england-cricket","12":"tag-sport","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}