England Ashes review: Rob Key on Brendon McCullum, Harry Brook's incident in Wellington and England lessons in Australia

ECB managing director Rob Key discusses England’s Ashes disappointment, how Brendon McCullum can evolve and whether the team has a drinking problem following Harry Brook’s incident in Wellington.

It comes following confirmation that McCullum will remain in his role as head coach despite England’s 4-1 defeat in Australia this winter.

Key answers the questions of Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton in a wide-ranging interview on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast…

Why did England lose The Ashes?

“We had a bowling attack out there that actually was inexperienced for the conditions that they went into. We got to a point where in Brisbane, we got to a decent score, not a great score. We got to a decent score and we weren’t able to be in the position where our bowlers were in enough rhythm, enough form to be able to go and put their best foot forward. The same thing with the batters in Perth.

“You’re trying to work out ways that the next time that happens, they’re in the best form. Most of our players, it’s unfair to say that a lot of our players don’t turn up fit, don’t turn up robust and ready for the rigours of international cricket, certainly international cricket. But on a couple of occasions, there were players that had been out of form for far too long.

“You’re hoping that they’re going to find form, almost be all right on the night. They didn’t. So all of those things you’re going to try and put right.

“Just the rigours of international Ashes cricket, it’s as tough a cricket as what there ever was. And that side, I think for a number of those players, they weren’t equipped for what was coming, especially when it came back. They’re the things that you’re trying to put right for next time.”

Key’s toughest three months – and why sackings are not the answer

“If accountability is purely sacking, I wouldn’t underestimate what we’ve gone through. And again, it’s not, you know, there’s people in much worse off situations.

“It’s a privileged position to be in. But this has been as tough a three months, I think I’ve had in my career, if not my life, really, you know, everything you work towards. And it doesn’t go right.

“And you have to face some hard truths as much as anything. So it’s hard to argue that there’s accountability if the only way you can see that is by sacking people. But I don’t believe that actually that’s the only way.

“It doesn’t mean that Brendan, Ben, everything we’ve worked towards doesn’t work. And then you get criticized quite rightly, as I said, from from that moment on, that is not easy to take. So I feel like, you know, the account from an accountability point of view, I feel like we’ve, you know, we’ve we’ve gone through our own versions of that as much as anything.”

How can McCullum evolve?

“I think we both believe that actually we’ve put a huge amount of value on loyalty and having a settled team on giving players a good run. Now, the problem with that is we probably swing it too far.

“There’s a lack of consequence for poor performance. There’s a lack of consequence when people don’t go on and score the runs they should or take the wickets they should. And that then becomes part of that culture. We need to be more ruthless in what we do, we need to be more ruthless in some of the selections that we’ve done. The reason we did it was because we put a huge amount of value on having a settled team going into the Ashes.

“Now we’re at a new stage where it’s like, ‘OK, we need these players to become proper run scorers now’. You still want players who can put bowlers under pressure, but actually, you’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to turn 70s into big 150s, 200 match-winning contributions.

“If you want Brendon McCullum to become a completely different coach or do everything in a completely different way, of course, we don’t want him to do that. You may as well employ a different coach. Brendon McCullum was a very good player and good players don’t get to that position by not evolving, not adapting, and that’s what we want him to do.

“When you look at the way the team played out in Sri Lanka, I thought they did that. All this Bazball stuff about only one way of playing, you try and play like that out in Sri Lanka on those spinning pitches, you cannot do that. You look at the way that we went from the Champions Trophy, where we were all out pace, we thought that was the way. And then we went for spin to try and come up with a different style of playing, a different way to adapt to those conditions, and I thought they did that brilliantly.

“I don’t want him to become a different coach. I just want us to become a better side than what we’ve been, to evolve into a team that is. He’s always wanted a side that can adapt.

“When you speak to him, all the time it’s like ‘How do we get to this point where now we want players that are ruthless?’. You don’t want someone to completely come and play in a different style. You still want players that can go out there and score runs against the best bowlers in the world, not just survive, because you’re never going to get anywhere doing that. But once they get the opportunity, you want them to go and become relentless and score as many runs as possible.”

Do England have a drinking problem?

“I don’t think they have a drinking problem. I don’t think it’s fair to put everyone into that bracket. I think the majority of those players are unbelievably diligent and will do whatever they can to try and maximise their potential and play as well as they can for England.

“Like a lot of teams, there’s two or three players that can be irresponsible with alcohol given that opportunity. What we’re trying to do is try and find that happy medium.

“It’s not about drinking so they can get away from the game. Cricket is different to a lot of other sports, especially international cricket. When you are away for the entire year, almost even if you’re playing at home, you’re away.

“The stress, the scrutiny on these multi-format players is tough. So, can we be better? Do we need to keep evolving? I think the game does, to be honest, and that’s not a problem I’m going to be able to solve on my own. We need to be able to create opportunities and situations where these players can make the right decisions.

“We can take away the temptation, but as I said, it’s finding that sweet spot in the middle. Because you go too hard on them, like your kids, then they rebel one way. For the most part, this team, we try to trust them as much as we can and they’ve made good decisions.

“The Harry Brook-Wellington incident clearly hit us hard and no more so than Harry in particular. He’s not the first person, he probably won’t be the last either to do that, but I’m hoping that will be the making of him. Going back to that decision, a lot of the stuff that I’ve read and seen, we’ve spoken about, we debated all of those things.

“We believe that Harry Brook made a horrendous mistake, but he came to us and Harry up to that point had a pretty clean slate. Before any of this Wellington business came about, Harry Brook had committed to English cricket. He had said ‘no I don’t want to go to the IPL, I’ll get banned for three years because I want to do what’s best for England cricket and my England cricket career’, and I believe that deserves some credit and that’s why we made the decision we did.”

Do England care about country cricket?

“You do have to build bridges if that’s what people think [that England do not care about county cricket]. If that’s the perception then they’re the things that we need to do. I’ve always tried in this job to not be a person that moans about county cricket, that sits there blaming county cricket.

“When we lose the Ashes, I’m not sitting here blaming county cricket. When I took this job on the ECB was very much dictating how the game should be played in this country or what happens in county cricket. Now there’s been a shift where it’s for the county game to decide on the decisions that get made for it.

“As far as Brendan’s concerned, that’s not true either about he has no care, but Brendan now does the job for 12 months of the year. He’s now full-time across both formats. The trade in that really is that when he’s not in series, when he’s not away on tour, which is a hell of a lot of cricket now, then I want him to get away from it.

“I want him to just be able to down tools and just not have to worry about anything else and all of our system, the whole selection process that we have, which is quite vast. From the scouting system to the main team selection, to what we’re going to bring in as a county, what we’re going to call the county insight group.

“Preferably two coaches from the first division, two coaches from the second division, so they can input into our selection and then when you’re playing as a county player trying to get in the England team, you know when people are watching you, you know that people are there.

“We cover every single game and we pick people from the county game. So I don’t agree with everything that people say there because we’re trying hard to make sure that that’s not the case, but we need to do it better.”

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