ECB has taken a risk keeping McCullum and Key – who must now placate the public | Ali Martin
Having endorsed Brendon McCullum’s continuation as men’s head coach after an Ashes defeat riddled with self‑owns and kept Rob Key above him as team director, the England and Wales Cricket Board could in one sense be viewed as having taken the path of least resistance.McCullum’s contract runs to the end of 2027 and it would cost a pretty penny to cut him loose.The players enjoy the pair’s methods and tend to call the shots in the modern era.There may not be an all-format candidate for head coach out there.Besides, look over there: the Hundred returns in July, ready to overload your eyeballs with multicoloured content.
Difference being that while a Hundred team can tank without so much as a murmur from supporters, the Test team doing so elicits far stronger emotions.For all we are told the future is a global network of “exciting” leagues – by sheer coincidence, they also line the pockets of a select few – Test cricket is the format that stirs the English the most.While social media can be a dodgy barometer, it is clear that anger remains regarding England’s 4-1 defeat in Australia – anger scarcely softened by a valiant semi-final loss against India in the T20 World Cup.Not every defeat is unforgivable.It is fine for opponents to be too good.
But in Australia and during the lead-up, pretty much every decision backfired.They didn’t see it coming either.Two days out from the first Test in Perth, Ben Stokes got his team into a huddle and told them they were ready.Yet fast bowlers were not conditioned – fears over injuries led to a light-touch approach – and batters went into that jaw‑shattering defeat, then Brisbane, blind to the perils of driving on the up.Shoaib Bashir, the first-choice spinner, was not picked because they suddenly wanted bob-each-way Will Jacks to lengthen the batting, while Jacob Bethell twiddled his thumbs until the Ashes were lost because of loyalty to Ollie Pope.
As sublime as Bethell’s maiden Test century was in Sydney, it only added to an already maddening sense of “what if”.We could go on.Although a personal annoyance is not so much England’s attacking outlook failing in Australia as their belief in it proving so brittle.Stokes weirdly turned his back on it when defeat in Brisbane was looming and then in Adelaide – Australia’s flattest pitch, the hosts bowling in 40C heat – the players suddenly blinked in confusion.For those who were willing the project to fail, the third Test became an acceptable defeat; blokes digging in, showing some fight, even if 3-0 meant the Ashes were gone.
When McCullum was asked why they met the best batting conditions with caution – the slowest 250-plus total under his watch, no less – his reply was a pregnant one: “Good question,” He and Stokes had clearly splintered by way of philosophy,So as much as retention looks like the easy option, Richard Gould, the ECB chief executive, and Richard Thompson, the ECB chair, have in fact taken a leaf out of McCullum’s philosophy and run towards the danger,They took over in 2022 after McCullum and Key were already in place and could have made a change now with impunity,Having not, what follows is on them.
Gould at least acknowledged it would not be a popular call and the fact that Test cricket is what people in England care about most.Apparently Test viewership has gone up 25% in the past four years and that it remains the No 1 format across all age groups.So in fairness at least they have not banked on apathy to see them through choppy waters.Selling the status quo was never going to be easy, however, and the briefing on Monday did not hugely inspire.The tweaks either appeared peripheral – a bowling guru here, a new selector there – or flagged up shortcomings that should have been spotted previously.
Asked what phrases like “adapt” and “evolve” mean in practice, the answers were no less woolly.Key wanting greater “consequence” for poor performance also raised eyebrows.There have been some enjoyable highs along the way, it must be said.McCullum breathed new life into the side in the first year.But the set-up has since overseen four major Test series against Australia and India, winning none.
The Ashes campaigns in particular were approached too casually, needing a 2-0 deficit in 2023 for England to get serious.No one wants players stifled to the point of jacking it all in for the easy money in T20.Equally, an incident such as Harry Brook’s late-night altercation with a bouncer reflected poorly on the environment.As with plenty of this review, it was a case of learning a lesson that should have been known.Beating New Zealand and Pakistan at home this summer may not in itself quell the concerns.
What England must do beyond this is better engage with the domestic game, be more meritorious in selection – incomings and outgoings – and demonstrate that Stokes and McCullum are truly back on the same page, not lurching with the captain’s emotions.“There’s this view that it’s either blocking or slogging,” Key said.“That Ben is for blocking, Brendon is for slogging.That is not the case.We still want players to be aggressive.
They’ve just got to be relentless in how they do it,Fundamentally there is alignment in the way we are going,”While that relationship has seemingly been patched up with some honest conversations, winning back the public may take a bit longer,
Mr Motivator urges government to treat ’bed poverty’ as a national crisis
Mr Motivator is lobbying the government to tackle the number of children in the UK who have no bed of their own as Barnardo’s reveals demand for furniture from struggling families has surged by 40% in the last year.The children’s charity said beds had become“like a luxury item” as the war in Iran threatens to exacerbate cost of living pressures.Meanwhile, TV and online fitness coach Mr Motivator, real name Derrick Evans, who lives in Greater Manchester, is urging government to treat “bed poverty” as a national crisis and include it in child poverty planning.The former GMTV star said: “I have always hated the fact that it’s merged into poverty in general, which means it gets lost.“Beds can end up at the bottom of the list for families in a desperate position, and the consequences are enormous
Property company denies trying to mass-evict tenants before England’s no-fault evictions ban
A property company accused of trying to mass-evict tenants in the weeks before no-fault evictions are banned has denied doing so, saying it is simply implementing “routine and lawful tenancy management”.A statement from Criterion Capital, set up by the billionaire property magnate Asif Aziz, was issued in response to Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, who wrote to the company to seek “urgent” answers about its plans.Criterion has reportedly sent section 21 notices, which give notice of proposed eviction, to large numbers of its tenants. At prime minister’s questions this month, the Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh said she knew of at least 130 such notices issued by Criterion at just one development, Britannia Point, in her south London constituency of Mitcham and Morden.In a letter to the directors of Criterion, seen by the Guardian, Pennycook said that if the company was seeking to remove tenants before the Renters’ Rights Act comes into force on 1 May, banning so-called no-fault evictions in England, it would be the actions of a “thoroughly unscrupulous landlord”
No new meningitis cases linked to Kent outbreak found, health agency says
No new cases of meningitis linked to the outbreak in Kent have been detected, raising hopes that it has been well contained and has not led to people elsewhere catching the disease.The number of people affected remains at 29, of which 20 are are confirmed and nine probable cases in what health officials say is an “explosive” outbreak – the biggest to occur in the UK in a generation.Two of the 20 people confirmed with the disease have died: Juliette Kenny, 18, a secondary school student, and an unnamed University of Kent student. The other 18 are thought still to be in hospital.Nineteen of the 20 confirmed cases were of meningitis B
‘Not just a Jewish service’: Hatzola ambulances serve whole community, say volunteers
‘Accountants, plumbers, surveyors – whatever it might be, they’ve all got day jobs. Everyone has got kits in their car, everyone responds from wherever they are,” said Yossi Richman, on life as a trained volunteer paramedic at Hatzola, the ambulance service funded by Jewish giving.Richman also serves as a governance lead at Hatzola in Golders Green, north London, where four ambulances were attacked by arsonists in the early hours of Monday morning.The attack has left Jewish communities reeling. But alongside the concerns about community safety amid rising antisemitism, there’s a determination to protect the humanitarian civic principles Hatzola represents
There must be more support for young people who are seeking jobs | Letters
Regarding Polly Toynbee’s article (Young people want to work: now there may be jobs for them, 17 March), as a young person, I believe that the government must rebuild trust in its support, or young people will continue to be held back. I am now working, but I know what it’s like to leave university and face unemployment: constant rejection, confusion and anxiety about what comes next. It is scary. But what Polly describes isn’t unusual; it’s the reality for many, and repeated rejections knock your confidence.Support on offer has struggled to keep up with the growing challenges that young people face
Those who view voyeuristic nightlife videos are the issue | Letters
I was grateful for Emily Retter’s focus on the feelings and experiences of the women affected by voyeuristic nightlife content (‘They were comparing me to Bonnie Blue’: the disturbing rise of nightlife content, 18 March). Being “watched” in public is perhaps a uniquely female experience. Sadly many women can relate to being leered at from car windows or catcalled from scaffolding, with video content being the latest, depressing escalation of this kind of behaviour.What is new, however, is the scale of the audience for the content documenting such behaviour. I am struck by the lack of repercussions for the (presumably exclusively male) viewers and commenters of these videos
Estate of Mike Lynch ordered to pay £920m to Hewlett-Packard
Energy price shock and interest rate rises could cause ‘pronounced’ UK recession, economist warns – as it happened
Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger
Amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online surged in 2025
World Snooker Championship to remain at Crucible until at least 2045 with revamp
West Ham stadium stance could block London’s World Athletics Championships bid, warns Coe