McCullum must be held to account even if England end Ashes with another win | Barney Ronay
A 3-2 series scoreline may make it hard to change coach but you don’t reward a failure of planning because the players clawed a bit back when it was too lateThere’s a good origins-story-style video in the Sky Sports masterclass archive,Filmed at Edgbaston in 2016, it shows the blue-sky brothers, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key, back when the world was still young, looking sharp and chiselled, laughing and joshing on the outfield, and nominally discussing how to bat in T20 cricket,And yes, the chemistry, well, the chemistry is overpowering,It almost feels like a romantic intrusion, the viewer cast as gooseberry,This is Coldplay kiss-cam energy.
This is like watching Bacall and Bogart fall in love on screen.You know how to whistle don’t you, Keysey? You just put your lips together and enter into a transcendent game state.Mainly the clip is a useful basic primer on McCullum’s own anti-philosophy of cricketing success.How, Key asks, does he prepare himself? Well, it’s about getting into a really relaxed state.And after that maintaining the really relaxed state.
There is technical stuff.“I try to hit it over there, sometimes over there, sometimes over there.” He has fast hands.What’s the deal with fast hands? “I don’t really know.” How about the pull shot? What’s that all about? “I think I … I don’t even know how I play it … I think it’s more of a … swivel.
”It is no great revelation that a McCullum masterclass should have no deep intellectual content, that it’s a bit like watching your dad explain how to make a cup of tea.This is why it’s a good video.McCullum was for a while the No 1-ranked T20 player in the world.And this is what Key is bringing out, the beauty of high talent meets mental clarity.A random bloke telling you he just whacks it is meaningless.
The hammer of the Indian Premier League doing this is interesting, as it is when McCullum says his method is transferable because “in Test cricket I never really had a defensive game that was going to sustain against quality bowling”.Sound familiar, as a method? This is insight, the power of knowing both your strengths and your limits.Still though.And throwing forward, would you ask this same masterclasser to plan, coach, and detail-manage an Ashes tour? And not just ask, but insist, because McCullum didn’t actually apply for the job in the first place.When that fails in a fug of slack planning, would you then ask the same person to try again? To change and to learn, when the pare-it-back life is his entire methodology?By now McCullum has long since begun to feel like a corporate motivational speaking event that got out of hand.
The morning routine guy.The how to fold your T-shirts guy.The one-simple-trick guy.He can be good and valuable.But there’s no need to ask him to run the entire global corporate accounting practice.
This is also why McCullum must now be held to account under normal rules of success and failure, whatever the endgame to this zombified tour, starting with Sydney this weekend,There is an argument that this is a match both Australia and England might be better served, structurally, by losing,Australia to speed the process of rebuilding an ageing team, England to focus minds on the live content of this series,The talk already is that a 3-2 scoreline would make it very hard to change coach or managing director,Winning two Tests in Australia, after failing to win any of the previous 18.
This is a real thing.It is at least a convincing cover for a fudge, given that sacking people costs money and effort and is no guarantee of an uptick.It would also be a mistake to get distracted by what happens on the way out.Nothing has changed.The job for McCullum and Key was to oversee the environment, to prep the details.
You don’t reward a failure of planning because the players were good enough to claw it back once that part had gone.It will be hard to maintain this clarity should England avoid defeat in Sydney.There are so many distractions already.Even the Australian reaction to losing at its great secular cathedral of sport, its temple of chino shorts, has been misleadingly overblown.The MCG groundsman has been tried on the courthouse steps.
Greg Chappell has written an article about the death of warrior culture, about dishonour and disgrace, about crack-ball barbarians at the gates,This is all distractingly feelgood for English cricket,Maybe, in the end, the real Bazball was the Australians we annoyed along the way,Don’t be misled, either, by the fact that Melbourne was actually a good win, irrespective of the pitch furore,Don’t be distracted by the approach of a T20 World Cup, which, like London vape shops, tend to pop up in twos and threes every hundred yards or so.
Don’t be distracted, above all, by the fact that changing the coach will not solve the chronic structural problems of English cricket, its alienation, its invisibility, its elitism,In fact, this last bit is the whole point here,The appointment of convincing amateurs to the highest roles,The tolerance of slackness, jobs for the boys, PR-ing your own shortcuts,This is a huge amount of all that is wrong with the sport.
This is why there has to be accountability,What precedent does it set, what message does it send – other than, perhaps, an accurate one – if it turns out you can get away with not having proper warm-up games, not having a fielding coach, not having a pink-ball practice game for players who have yet to see a pink ball? Not to mention every other fine detail, right down to the reverse-cinderella-ing of Shoaib Bashir, replaced after all that by Will Jacks, a golf-bro utility man,If none of that matters, then nothing really matters,Even before Sydney there has been some revisionism,There has been talk that it was OK not to have practice games, because England didn’t have practice games before and won the first Test of those tours.
But this is more squint-past-the-detail stuff.It overlooks the fact those other opponents also didn’t have much prep, whereas Australia were cocked and ready.It overlooks the basic point that because you got away with not revising for one exam doesn’t mean you should never revise for any exams.The argument for retaining the current regime is that England can learn from this, that McCullum can add a grasp of detail to his inspirationalism.Paring it back, stripping it away: this has been his super-strength.
What would Baz with data briefings actually look like? The talk from Ben Stokes of weak men, the mid-series tough love, felt like an emergency attempt to drip some substance into the slack areas behind these baggy first principles.And Stokes is the key now.The captain will be asked to give his own tour review.A clear, impartial account could well leave McCullum dangling by a thread, and Key required to own up to a lack of oversight.If Stokes feels those above him can learn from this the current regime might hang on.
Sydney is an opportunity to win again.But it shouldn’t be permitted to cloud these facts.Or the need, above all, to feel like there are consequences, jeopardy, a forensic eye on performance; that this is above all a sport that still matters.
Patriots’ Stefon Diggs faces strangulation and assault charges in Massachusetts
New England Patriots star wide receiver Stefon Diggs is facing strangulation and other criminal charges in connection with a dispute with his former private chef, police said.News of the charges emerged after a court hearing on Tuesday in Dedham, Massachusetts. Diggs is charged with felony strangulation or suffocation and misdemeanor assault and battery.Diggs’s lawyer, David Meier, said in an emailed statement that Diggs “categorically denies these allegations”.Meier said the allegations never occurred, describing them as unsubstantiated and uncorroborated
Travball emerges, athletics surges, Brisbane basks in success: Australia’s biggest sporting moments of 2025
An Ashes-defining intervention, an NRL showstopper, and new hope forced on the AFL are among our writers’ great moments in Australian sports this yearThe highly anticipated Ashes was quickly torn apart by Travis Head’s cameo at the top of the order that has since turned into a much longer stay. The NRL grand final was another scene for an all-time breathtaking display, as the Broncos joined the AFL’s Lions in making Brisbane the epicentre of Australian sport. Here are our writers’ sporting highlights of 2025.It will be a long time before there is an NRL finals campaign like that of Brisbane in 2025. From an unlikely victory over minor premiers Canberra in golden point, through the dramatic second-half turnaround to end Penrith’s dynasty, to the ultimate destination on grand final day
Cameron Green remains Australia’s golden child but the blessing has become a curse | Brendan Foster
Bazball might be dead, or at least on its last legs, but before its demise it appears to have bewitched cricketing prodigy Cameron Green with its high-risk, at times mindless aggression.Some of the young allrounder’s premeditated shots during the Ashes have made England wunderkind Harry Brook look like their unpretentious former opener, Geoff Boycott.In the second Test, Green was promoted to No 5 and powered his way to 45 while belting England’s short-ball barrage to all corners of the Gabba.Even though his regular backing away towards the leg-stump to counter Brydon Carse’s bouncers was becoming a little reckless and predictable, it didn’t matter because Green was striking the ball so cleanly.Then he started telegraphing his attacking philosophy so early that all Carse had to do was aim at the pegs, because despite Green being two metres tall, his outstretched bat was nowhere near the ball when it smashed into his stumps
The Breakdown | ‘There is no ceiling for these players’: Jamaica targeting 2031 Rugby World Cup
Nigerian influence within English rugby union is strong and getting stronger. But could Jamaican rugby, in time, become just as significant?There is no shortage of talent. Jamaica UK Rugby, a club under the umbrella of the Jamaican Rugby Football Union, has 500 members and counting. There are youth sides and international pathways for sevens and 15s and volunteers, on both sides of the Atlantic, working to help their rugby grow.Phil Davis, a London-based youth coach, approached the Jamaican union in 2021 to see if there was a pathway to the 15s game for a promising young prop called Ben Hatfield
Online school and junior tennis: freedom, focus – and a quiet cost
Elite junior tennis players are flocking to online schools. The model offers flexibility and focus – but raises deeper questions about growth, pressure and childhoodIn a major study released recently in Epidemiology, conclusions were drawn – yet again – regarding how shutdowns and online learning were ultimately very damaging to kids’ emotional and mental health (obviously some cohorts of kids were more affected than others with financial security a big part of the calculation). This is no major surprise as parents and students alike weren’t happy with the remote learning environment.Yet despite this general consensus about online schooling not being as healthy as regular school, a new trend has exploded since Covid: the rapid growth of online schooling for tennis players and other athletes. Parents and their junior athletes feel that by being able to play several hours in the day instead of after school it will accelerate their progress in the sport while still leaving room for academics
Five things England must do to make it two Ashes Test wins in a row in Sydney
Keira Knightley may not spring immediately to mind as a source of inspiration for Ben Stokes’s captaincy but her tactics for dealing with the paparazzi at the height of her fame recalled some of Stokes’s early forays with the armband.Knightley recently explained to Graham Norton that she refused to have anyone follow her, so would stand stock still for hours at a time until the photographers got bored or, better, weirded out. “I do think I freaked them out, they were like: ‘I don’t understand what’s happening here.’”When Brydon Carse came out to bat at No 3 in England’s successful chase in Melbourne, it drew gasps from the crowd in the stadium and saw a spike in social media and texts from those watching at home. “That’s not … Is that Brydon Carse?”Carse made only six runs, largely playing like a man at a silent disco who has his headset tuned to thrash metal
Coral Adventurer passengers return with diverging accounts of cruise ship drama
Oasis reunion and Taylor Swift vinyls fuel boom year for UK music industry
The office block where AI ‘doomers’ gather to predict the apocalypse
AI showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be ready to pull plug, says pioneer
Damien Martyn, former Australian Test cricketer, in hospital in induced coma with meningitis
Glorious Gary Anderson revels in his remarkable renaissance