Inside England’s ‘six months of waste’: How Poms botched Baz sacking... and it cost them Stokes —UK View

Bazball is no more.

Four years on from beginning his tenure as England coach in a blaze of glory with an unprecedented run of victories, Brendon McCullum’s axing as Test coach brings to a close a turbulent, controversial, bizarre and often ludicrous stint at the helm.

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The New Zealander won 10 of his first 12 Tests in charge, including a remarkable 3-0 series sweep on the flat tracks of Pakistan in 2022, and came agonisingly close to bringing down World Test Champions Australia in a pulsating 2023 Ashes.

But a disastrous last 18 months in which England failed to win a Test series save for a one-off win over Zimbabwe, embarked on a miserable tour of Australia in which the team’s lack of preparation and drinking culture were intensely scrutinised, and lost a home series to New Zealand amid yet more controversy that saw captain Ben Stokes throw in the towel, sealed McCullum’s fate – and that of the game style that bears his name.

As the England and Wales Cricket Board scramble to pick up the pieces and appoint a new Test coach, 12 months out from the next Ashes series, the verdict from the UK press has been scathing.

“This regime will ultimately be judged as a failure,” was the view of ESPNcricinfo cricket correspondent Andrew Miller, who coined the term ‘Bazball’ in 2022.

“England came into it with high hopes of trying to use the momentum and the excitement of having such a core of great players in their midst going out there and playing as if they were little kids again. Just forgetting about context, go out there, see ball, hit ball.

“It was wonderful — while it worked.

“Ultimately, England didn’t win enough. They didn’t win the Ashes at home in 2023. They didn’t beat India away in 2024, and they did not beat Australia in the Ashes down under, a series that, frankly, England thought they went into with huge high hopes.

“It was unquestionably their best opportunity to win in Australia since that famous victory in 2010/11, but it went wrong for all the sorts of reasons that hindsight will make it look as though it was bound to go wrong.”

Writing for The Times, English cricket great Michael Atherton said ‘something had to give’ following the Test team’s poor recent results and a controversial nightclub incident that saw captain Stokes suspended for the second Test against New Zealand and sparked the all-rounder’s international retirement.

“The results and chaos around the Test team demanded change and it is Brendon McCullum who has paid the penalty,” Atherton wrote.

“McCullum had a hugely positive impact in his first two years, following his appointment in early 2022, helping to breathe new life, direction and energy into a broken team.”

Atherton heaped criticism on England director of cricket Rob Key, who has been backed in by the ECB despite the changes happening under his watch, blaming the 47-year old for failing to make a tough but necessary call on either McCullum or Stokes following the team’s 4-1 Ashes defeat.

“What does it say, for example, about the judgment of Richard Gould and Richard Thompson, who doubled down on Key, McCullum and Stokes at the end of the Ashes, but have lost two of these key men within six months?” Atherton wondered.

“A more judicious call at the end of the Ashes might have been cleaner and less disruptive than what has transpired and would have prevented the past six months of waste.”

Fellow former England captain Nasser Hussain, meanwhile, was equally scathing of Key’s role in the team’s breakdown behind the scenes, and in particular the recent imposition of a team curfew and banning drinking in the lead-in to matches.

“Recently everything that I’ve said about McCullum can be thrown at Key’s door: a lacking of attention to detail, even the curfew,” Hussain told Sky Sports.

“In the last few days, having to clarify exactly what the curfew means — it tells you where your side are if you’re having to have a curfew.

“If you’re having to treat grown-up professional sportsmen with curfews, you’re not in the right place.”

McCullum’s sacking comes just months after his job managing all three England teams was spared following a post-Ashes review, with a strong performance in reaching the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup in March enough to stay the board’s hand.

But in the wake of his removal from the Test team, the delay has been panned in the UK press — with claims that Stokes was needlessly lost to the England side as a result.

“In truth, McCullum should have gone after the 2025-26 Ashes, when cracks first started to appear in his relationship with Stokes, and there seemed little sense that he knew how to take the team forward,” wrote Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail.

“In the ECB statement announcing the news, Key said McCullum ‘leaves the Test team well set and poised to achieve great things’. Alas, the opposite is true, with the Test side now rivalling the one-day team – eighth in the rankings, only seven years after they won the World Cup – for ineptitude.”

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Added cricket journalist Nick Hoult in The Telegraph: “Brendon McCullum’s sacking was inevitable in January, but instead the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) wasted six months and their prevaricating cost the team Ben Stokes.

“It was clear Stokes and McCullum, two alpha males who rarely think they are wrong, would never work happily together again.

“Stokes could have built a relationship with a new head coach that refreshed him and extended his captaincy to next year’s Ashes. With a new man in charge, it is unlikely the Rex Rooms scandal would have happened or been handled so badly. There was just too much baggage.”

The announcement of McCullum’s axing coinciding with England’s women’s team’s historic Test against India at Lord’s has also come in for criticism.

The decision took attention away from the third day’s play, with England reaching stumps six wickets down and needing a further 327 runs for an unlikely victory.

Former English women’s cricketer Alex Hartley, commentating on the match for BBC Sport, said the timing of the ECB’s public statement was disrespectful to the women’s game.

“Wait until Tuesday,” she said.

“It’s [the women’s Test] a historic moment within itself.

“There’s an ODI series starting Tuesday. I completely understand that they want to get the news out before then.

“But I’m sorry, something more important for me [is] women’s cricket. If you say that you respect the game and you want the game to improve, then don’t just pay it lip service, actually prove it. Actually say, we will hang onto this news until Tuesday morning, or 7:00 on Monday night.”

Among the frontrunners to replace McCullum is former England coach Andy Flower, who led the team to a historic 2010/11 Ashes win in Australia before being ousted following the disastrous 5-0 whitewash in the 2013/14 series.

For Atherton, Flower’s hard-nosed attitude towards behavioural standards makes him an ideal fit to take over following McCullum’s famously loose approach.

“It is inconceivable he would have agreed to the anaemic warm-up programme that undermined England’s latest Ashes challenge almost before it had begun,” Atherton said.

“His approach would be poles apart from McCullum, not least because he regards the last-chance saloon as a metaphor rather than a social engagement.

“But his hard-nosed approach and technical rigour may be just what this talented but wayward Test set-up requires.”

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