Rob Key insists Brendon McCullum is the best person to continue leading England, but admits he doesn’t know what the ECB are planning after the Ashes defeat.
The tour, touted as a tradition-defining project, descended into a familiar exploration of the English game after three successive defeats in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide.
The urn may already be gone, but England still have a chance to regain some pride, with two Tests still left, starting with the Boxing Day match in Melbourne.
Failure to do so could put Mr Key’s jobs, including his role as managing director of men’s cricket, at risk. McCullum has already indicated his intention to stay, and Key, who appointed him as Test coach in 2022, remains firmly in his corner.
“Brendon is an outstanding coach,” Key said on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast. “A lot of it is our fault. It has always been important to put pressure on the bowlers and absorb pressure, but we haven’t done that enough both against India in the summer and this game against India.
“Brendon’s track record as a coach is great. If you compare him to other coaches, we haven’t won the big series, but do we need to evolve and adapt and change and get better at all these things we talk about? Of course we will.”
“Do you think he’s the right guy to do it? If he’s as ready to do it as I am, then he’s the right guy. Brendon is a resilient character. There’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggests he doesn’t want to do it.”
“When you go on tours like this, when you’re losing the Ashes series in Australia, half the team hates the captain and the other half hates the coach. That hasn’t happened at all on this trip. Considering what’s happened so far, they’ve put the players together surprisingly well. But do we have to evolve? Absolutely.”
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Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain reflect on the fifth day of the third Test, when Australia won by 82 runs and England’s Ashes fate was sealed.
Mr Key acknowledged that with the four-year Ashes cycle being used as a barometer of England’s success and progress, a series of shenanigans in Australia could leave the ECB with no choice but to undergo a radical overhaul.
“Without a doubt, that’s what’s happening in these things,” he added. “The England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) decision is just that: whether to tear things up and start over. In politics, you often go one direction and then the other.
“We need to get better and evolve as a management team, and they need to decide if we are the right people for it.
“In the case of Brendon (McCallum) and Ben (Stokes), what I would say is they were very good. If you look at everything they’ve done under the most intense scrutiny over the last three or four years, they’ve done great things for English cricket.”
“As long as they are ready to evolve, they should stay in that state and the ECB can decide what they want to do with me.”
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Ben Stokes reacts after England’s loss to Australia in the third Test in the Ashes.
A wider assessment of what England went wrong will surely be done in the new year, but manager Key has already pointed out some mistakes.
He admitted that the preparation period for such a big series – which only included a white-ball trip to New Zealand and one intra-squad warm-up match at the club ground – was insufficient.
“There’s a difference between planning and planning wrong,” Key says. “The idea that I didn’t care about my preparation is not true. It’s hard to argue that was the case because obviously it didn’t work out, but I’ll explain why.
“We had a T20 and a white-ball series in New Zealand and it was very important that everyone knew what kind of team this was, what we were aiming for and how we had prepared. Nothing was different, it was just to prepare like we would do anywhere. But it didn’t work out.
“We went to Lilac Hill knowing we couldn’t replicate the conditions we’d be facing, but there’s no place other than WACA or Optus Stadium where you can replicate those conditions. That was the idea behind it. We felt we were good enough to be ready for a Test match, but it just didn’t work out.”
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Rob Key has come under fire for England’s break against Noosa between the second and third Ashes Tests, claiming it was like a “stag do” and believes there is no drinking culture within the team.
England also received criticism for the break in Noosa between the second and third Tests, with some claiming it resembled a “stade deux” with excessive drinking. Mr Key admitted that although he did not believe there was a culture of drinking within the group, it would be unacceptable if the situation reached that point.
“We live in a world where you pick up your phone and there’s something about cricket there every day,” he said. “I think it’s really important for the players to get away from the scrutiny and the spotlight. That was the whole plan for the Noosa trip so they could get away and throw their phones in the trash and not get flooded.”
“But it’s a fine balance, and if it ends up looking like hilarity and infidelity, that’s unacceptable. I don’t like the drinking culture. I myself don’t drink much, if at all.”
Asked if he was confident there was no drinking culture within the England squad, Key said: “We have put in extra security and we have made it clear that players are not going out all the time and being beaten up. So far, from what I have seen, that has not been the case, but if there was, that would be unacceptable.”
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