It’s time for supporters and management to decide what they want with England going into the second game of the Ashes 1-0 down. If entertainment is the sole criteria, that box has been ticked. The first Test was great to watch, and the mentality of the side, their attitude and bravery, was so impressive. It is not just hype: they are invigorating Test cricket and it is wonderful to see these talented players being let off the leash. It is no coincidence that Sky smashed their record viewing figures for the format, as fans enjoyed five days of exciting cricket played on a surface that would surely otherwise have guaranteed a boring draw.
But whatever Ben Stokes says about this team not being a results-oriented group in my experience supporters, and sportspeople, like to win. And for all the enjoyment of the match they will look back and wonder if they always made the right calls. In every team I’ve played in this has been a fun part of being a cricketer: to sit after a game, perhaps with a drink, and discuss the exciting moments, what went well and perhaps what can be improved. I would assume that with the number of backroom staff and the amount of playing experience inside the England dressing-room, they would be open to these sorts of discussions even if outwardly there is a complete lack of introspection: they just double down on everything, no doubts, no remorse.
After one narrow defeat nobody is suggesting a major overhaul. It might be that just one or two individuals need to slightly modify their approach. I think of the moment Joe Root ran down the wicket and got stumped trying to hit the ball into Birmingham city centre. This is someone who already had 10,000 Test runs and topped the Test rankings before Brendon McCullum was appointed, a master of his craft. Did he take a winning approach to his second innings, or a Bazball approach? Would it have actually been more aggressive for him to ruthlessly drive a few more nails into Australia’s coffin, rather than risk his wicket going for big shots? I think this was one of a few moments in the first Test when they could have approached things slightly differently, combining full-throttle entertainment with maximising their chances of winning.
I think we saw why Moeen Ali was selected: he has always bowled lots of good deliveries and he certainly did that – the one to dismiss Travis Head was a beauty – and if it was frustrating to watch him try to win a shot of the day prize rather than play a meaningful innings to help the tail to wag, it was entirely in keeping with what his coach and captain asked him to do. I imagine Rehan Ahmed’s instructions, should he replace Moeen this week, would be pretty similar.
But it seems impossible to pretend, given the problem with his finger – an issue that many predicted – that Moeen’s selection was a complete success. It is important to back your players in public but when at the end of the first Test McCullum insisted that Jonny Bairstow’s selection as wicketkeeper, and Moeen’s as frontline spinner, had been completely vindicated it seemed a denial of obvious reality. I could almost call it fake news.
The question is whether McCullum’s England will be open to reflecting, and potentially to modifying their methods. I spoke to someone at Kolkata Knight Riders, where McCullum coached before joining England, and they told me while he was there his mantra never changed: it was one size fits all, go hard, come what may, and we’ll have a drink at the end of it. It would seem results are secondary to excitement and the thrill of living in the moment, but this is the Ashes and I wonder if the English public will stay with him if they don’t get to enjoy wins as well as entertainment.
I think back to England’s white-ball revolution under Eoin Morgan after the 2015 World Cup, when they adopted a similar, all-out attacking mindset. It did not happen immediately, but over a period of time Morgan’s team learned to recognise situations where actually prudence was the better route to victory. When England won the 2019 World Cup Stokes seemed to sense these occasions better than anyone else, and he emerged as their batter of the tournament. After that experience Stokes should surely know that the answer to the question, “What kind of innings does my team need from me right now?” is not always the same.
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There is one problem with England’s approach that isn’t up for debate, and that is its impact on their bowlers. The talk was that McCullum and Stokes wanted hard, flat wickets, but that kind of surface doesn’t offer much to the three seamers England selected for the opening game. You could argue that the main impact of the pitch was to negate the greatest bowler England have ever had: James Anderson took only one wicket and has spoken since about how hard he found the experience. In Birmingham Australia bowled 866 deliveries, and England bowled 1,252: one team’s bowlers worked a lot harder than the other’s. There is an old saying about Test cricket: bat time and things get easier. Last week proved that no matter how much you pump up the crowd, no matter how many short midwickets you have, that saying holds true.
England’s record under McCullum and Stokes is exceptional but if you want to be consistent winners you’re going to have to be successful on many different surfaces, to face down different challenges and different opponents. If England don’t manage to turn it around at Lord’s there will be plenty of old heads talking about the need to play winning cricket, not just entertaining cricket.
