England coach suggests white-ball captain suffered from formats not being prioritised
Danyal Rasool28-Feb-20255:09
Who will England’s next white-ball captain be?
Sat alongside his departing captain Jos Buttler, perhaps it was telling the first emotion England coach Brendon McCullum voiced was sadness rather than pride. As Buttler announced he was quitting as England’s white-ball captain, expressing his own disappointment at the way events had panned out, McCullum’s initial reaction was to offer sympathy for Buttler and how much he had invested into a role that hasn’t quite worked out.McCullum suggested that was down to the circumstances Buttler had to lead his side in, rather than any shortcomings in his captaincy itself. Even as England struggled in white-ball ICC events since winning the 2022 T20I World Cup, Buttler often found himself leading sides on bilateral tours that weren’t close to full strength.On an ODI and T20I tour of West Indies late last year, sandwiched between Test series against Pakistan and New Zealand, none of England’s all-format players were part of the squad. Against Australia in September, Joe Root was rested after a busy Test season, while a number of players, including Root and Mark Wood, sat home while England toured West Indies at the tail-end of 2023. England lost all three ODI series.Related
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McCullum appeared to allude to those circumstances as he spoke of England’s next white-ball captain, and his desire to avoid putting him in similarly unenviable circumstances. “That’s something Keysy [Rob Key] and myself and the ECB are trying to ensure, that we give every format the most amount of attention that we possibly can,” he said. “It’s a tricky balancing act at times.”McCullum has been Test coach since 2022, and had his pick of players for that format. But with all three formats now falling under his stewardship, he hinted that full availability for Test cricket may no longer be as set in stone in future.”Looking back even on these most recent series, you’d argue that you could rest some players for some Test series and try and balance things out across formats,” he said. “Give us a couple of weeks to work things out and digest what’s unfolded here, work out what areas we’ve been short in and done okay in, work out the structure of how we want to do things moving forward. We’ve got a couple of months before our next assignment, so there is a bit of time to work that out.”McCullum kept returning to the theme of Buttler’s captaincy, and how he felt it would be remembered more kindly than raw results might suggest. He said Buttler had set a solid foundation for his replacement, comparing it to the health of the England Test side following Joe Root’s resignation as Test captain in 2022 after a series of indifferent results.2:16
McCullum: England fans deserve to see better results
“I said to the boys tonight in the team room sometimes it’s not necessarily the time that you’re in the post and the results that you get during that time. The impact you have in leadership positions can be felt after you left the post, and I’m sure that’ll be the case. I think Joe Root was a classic example of that with the Test captaincy. He was able to at least hold the fort to a degree under incredibly trying circumstances, and then the uplift of performance when Stokesy [Ben Stokes] took over sort of followed from that, and hopefully it’ll be the same across the white-ball teams whenever we decide on who that person is going to be.”The ECB had hoped linking up Buttler with McCullum, two preternaturally attacking white-ball players, would help unleash England’s white-ball potential in the way managed by Eoin Morgan following the 2015 World Cup. However, with results spiralling, England and McCullum have been criticised for what has come to be seen as a simplistic approach, not necessarily suited to the skillsets of the specific players England’s white-ball sides have at their disposal.McCullum pushed back against that notion firmly, pointing out the close margins England had missed out by this tournament. “We’ve had our opportunities and played some okay cricket,” he said, “and both games we could have won, and then we’re sitting here and talking about something slightly different. I genuinely believe we’ve got immense talent in English cricket across all forms.”If anything, we are lacking confidence. There’s a perception out there that we’re a happy-go-lucky, arrogant type of team. We couldn’t be further from that. These guys are too hard on themselves, they’ve got immense talent they are desperate … to perform. That’s actually stymying the ability of us to get the performance we want. They care too much. That’s not a bad thing. They’re just desperate to perform and do right by all those who support the team, and support them. Until we get to the stage where we’re able to still handle walking out there and playing, without wearing disappointment so heavily, then we’re always going to stymie ourselves. That’s our job over the next little while.”While Harry Brook is the favourite to succeed Buttler, McCullum said England had not decided on a successor. While that is partly because, in McCullum’s words, Buttler’s resignation “came a little sooner than expected”, he felt it also spoke to the characters in the England side.”There’s some really good leaders that have developed,” McCullum said. “That’s the mark of Jos’s captaincy, he brought on other leaders within the group. They’re not necessarily seasoned players, but they are young guys who have got good cricketing knowledge and he’s encouraged them to learn and develop as leaders. Whoever we settle on, we’ve just got to make sure we’re giving them the right support so that we can improve our performances.”