England: More Key Sorry

 

23/12

Duckett, call me an Uber for the nets, "drunk"!

Key Sorry  that England under-performed

Key in the Guardian

Rob Key points the finger at the individual at most to blame for Ashes catastrophe - himself

George Dobell

If you were after a symbol of this England tour, it came midway through Rob Key's first media interview of the campaign.

In attempting to explain away England's defeats, he was interrupted by a very loud announcement repeated multiple times. In every sense you wanted to look at it, alarm bells were sounding.

"This is an important emergency announcement," it said. "Please gather your belongings, follow directions from staff to make your way quietly and calmly to the nearest exit and leave the MCG."

Key, being an experienced media figure, smiled bashfully. He knew how it would look. Almost as if this great old cricket ground was rejecting his mitigation for another Ashes loss.

"That's the longest Test of the tour," the Press Association's Rory Dollard said as it ended. 

Key, to his credit, was humble and honest. He gave the media the best part of two hours - this interview alone lasted more than 50 minutes - and he admitted his own mistakes while refusing to pick out other individuals. It was a reminder, if any were needed, that he's a decent man.

But it was also hopeless.

For while Key identified the problems with England's series just fine - "we didn't score enough runs," being one piece of gold dust - he struggled to connect the dots. And those dots, again and again, lead back to decisions he made.

For example, he accepted England's pre-Ashes warmup preparations were inadequate. But he seemed surprised that conditions in white-ball cricket in New Zealand were not the same as conditions in red-ball cricket in Australia. "We ended up in tough, early-season conditions out in New Zealand," he said. Almost as if he were surprised that spring in New Zealand should feature spring weather in New Zealand.

Hearing some of his suggested solutions was frustrating, too. For example, he suggested the England setup could probably do with a few more specialist coaches. Exactly the sort of specialist coaches he and Brendon McCullum dispensed with when they were appointed.

"There's probably a few spots where we're weak in terms of our set-up at the moment, where we've stripped it back too much," he said.

It shouldn't really have been a surprise that England, having dispensed with a fielding coach, should drop so many catches and find themselves incapable of hitting the stumps with throws. It might be the biggest difference between these two teams.

It also felt, at times, as if we were seeing Key come to conclusions in real time. As if, in answering questions from the media, he was being forced to think about the reasons for England's failure for the first time.

Take this exchange about the head coach. Brendon McCullum, who has always said his coaching is more about "the top two inches" than anything technical, has already admitted the players' "desperation" to do well resulted in "getting in their own way". In short, that anxiety got the better of them.

But if McCullum cannot succeed in this area, what is he for? There is very little evidence that the "top two inches" are in operation when the likes of Harry Brook are batting.

"The top two inches are much easier if you're playing well technically," Key said. "And Brendon isn't the bloke who's going to be sitting there telling you where your elbow is and all of that stuff.

"I think there's lots of different reasons why the top two inches haven't quite worked. I don't think that's all on Brendon, albeit Brendon would probably accept that on himself."

It was, in some ways, refreshing to hear Key say England had "spoken a load of crap" and "sometimes taken dumb options" with the bat. It felt like an admission that England would have to play smarter cricket and talk in less hubristic tones.

"Looking to ramp bowlers very early on when you're on 10, stuff like that, is dumb cricket," Key said. Which might be interpreted as a reference to Joe Root's ramp in Rajkot. Root, it might be noted, was on 18 at the time, having resumed on nine overnight. It was the fifth over of the morning.

But it was also frustrating. As most of this stuff has been obvious for months, if not years. Just as it was obvious that the fielding would suffer if attention wasn't paid to it. Just as it was obvious that a white-ball tour of New Zealand was not adequate preparation for the Ashes. It sometimes seems it's only Key and McCullum who are surprised by this stuff.

It's somewhat ironic that talk of an alcohol culture may be the issue that actually brings Key down. For it's a red herring, really. Just as it was when it was used against the previous regime. It is probably true that British culture, in general, has a problem with alcohol. And it's certainly true that, in terms of high performance, the amount drunk by modern cricketers remains unhelpful.

But this team environment is nowhere near as bad as many before it. And England have reacted to the mental health issues previous tours have exacerbated by allowing the players more downtime to relax and decompress. It might, in this light, be seen as a consequence of sending them on multi-month tours that bleed into one another. They are desperate for a release and sometimes take it in unhealthy places. It is perhaps telling that few invited their families on this section of the tour.

It might also be remembered that England were 2-0 down before Noosa and actually produced their best performance after it. Besides, if Key really is suggesting that anything more than "a glass of wine with dinner" is excessive, he's going to be disciplining a lot of players.

There's a context to all this, though. And that is this: Key and co were appointed to provide a player-friendly environment at a time when England were concerned they would lose multiple players to franchise leagues.

Whether this was true or not - and there is a school of thought which suggests some player agents played the ECB like a piano here - it resulted in a situation where the squad was assured of high salaries, high comfort and high times. It worked brilliantly for a while, when they were all coming out of Covid lockdowns, but over time they've started to look less fit, less well-trained and less well-disciplined. What worked then might well not anymore.

At the same time, Key won't be drawn into talking about the structure of county cricket. You suspect this is because he knows it's hopeless: England are committed to The Hundred and, with that being the case, it's desperately tough to find a schedule which fits in the requisite amount of T20, List A and Championship cricket to optimise income and player development. 

But if he won't confront that problem, if he admits his planning has been poor, if he admits England are lacking technical expertise but he has appointed a coach who isn't interested in technique, if he accepts the team are playing "dumb" cricket and "speaking crap", well, maybe Key really should heed the alarms and "gather your belongings, follow directions from staff to make your way quietly and calmly to the nearest exit"?

Andrew Strauss remarries seven years after wife’s death

Former England cricket captain shares images of wedding to Antonia Linnaeus-Peat in Franschhoek, South Africa

Fiona Parker

Sir Andrew Strauss, the former England cricket captain, has remarried seven years after the death of his first wife.

Sir Andrew, 48, shared pictures of his wedding to 30-year-old Antonia Linnaeus-Peat in Franschhoek, South Africa, on Instagram.

He wrote: “Celebrating the most special day in our favourite part of the world. Thank you for loving me and the boys the way you do and for showing us true happiness – I am so lucky to have found you.

“Here’s to a lifetime of beautiful memories, my girl.”

Linnaeus-Peat, who previously worked as a PR executive and now runs her own company – Linnaeus Fine Art Advisory – is believed to have begun dating Sir Andrew around two years ago.

The cricketer lost his first wife, Ruth, to a rare form of lung cancer on Dec 29 2018. She was 46, and the couple had been married for 15 years. Their two sons, Samuel and Luca, are now aged 19 and 17.

The cricket legend went on to found the Ruth Strauss Foundation, a charity supporting families facing the death of a parent from the illness and funding research into non-smoking lung cancers, in his late wife’s memory.

In a 2023 interview with The Telegraph, he spoke of how grief affected him, saying: “Our time is limited, and therefore I need to be more conscious about what I do and don’t do.

“This might mean experiencing things that weren’t appealing to me before, or saying no to things even though I don’t want to let people down. But most of all, it means keeping the people most important to me happy.”

On the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast in November, Sir Andrew revealed that only family had been invited to his second wedding, which was held last Wednesday. It took place at La Clè Vineyard, around 50 miles east of Cape Town.

Sir Andrew is not in Australia for England’s disastrous Ashes series because of his wedding.

He is the last England captain to win an away Ashes series – a feat he achieved 15 years ago.

Sir Andrew led England to a 3-1 triumph in 2010-11, but since then they have lost 14 and drawn two of the last 18 Tests in Australia.

Investigation into drinking

McCullum wants to stay

Why Bazball's pet project Shoaib Bashir has been ditched: The mediocre numbers, the detrimental effect experts say spinner is having on Ben Stokes... and the reason counties won't touch him

Lawrence Booth - The Mail

Shoaib Bashir’s Test career is far from over – but it is certainly on hold. And for most of the past two years, that has not been England’s plan.

When Ben Stokes was asked on Monday whether the decision to pick Will Jacks instead for the crucial third Test at Adelaide was because of his greater ability with the bat, the England captain answered as if he had been asked a different question.

‘A little bit of both,’ he said, before praising Jacks’s all-round contribution at Brisbane. It felt like a Freudian slip: not only do England fancy the Surrey man's runs at No 8, a stance vindicated by his fighting 41 in the second innings at the Gabba, they have apparently concluded his off-breaks are more likely than Bashir’s to trouble Australia.

While the hosts welcomed back Nathan Lyon, an off-spinner with 562 Test wickets to his name, his standing buttressed by a pre-match induction into Adelaide Oval’s ‘Avenue of Honour’, England’s supposed No 1 spinner has been cast adrift in the very series for which he had been groomed. It is every bit as bad as it looks.

Bashir’s head may not have stopped spinning ever since he was chosen at the age of 20 to tour India in early 2024, in part because of grainy Twitter footage of him bowling to Alastair Cook in the County Championship.

If that struck some as Bazball being too clever by half, then five-fors at Ranchi and Dharamshala kept critics at bay. When Bashir wrapped up West Indies’ second innings at Trent Bridge that summer with five for 41, excitement was expressed about his potential, and column inches devoted to his dismissal of Jason Holder, bowled through the gate in time-honoured fashion.

But he has added only one haul of five or more wickets to his Test CV – against lowly Zimbabwe in Nottingham earlier this year – allowing scrutiny to grow and doubts to fester.

A memorable moment came against India at Lord’s in July, when he shrugged off a broken finger to dismiss last man Mohammed Siraj and secure a nailbiting 22-run win. 

Yet Bashir’s headlong hurtle into the Lord’s outfield, pursued by grateful team-mates, remains his most recent deed in an England shirt. For now, his record is marooned in mediocrity: 68 Test wickets at 39, with an economy rate of 3.78, reflecting neither incision nor control.

The talk here in Australia has become not so much ‘How is Bash bowling?’ as ‘How is Bash?’ For the last two days, Stokes has sounded like his therapist, while admitting things haven’t turned out as planned. 

‘It’s obviously disappointing for Bash not to get the opportunity later on in the series where we thought he was going to,’ he said on Tuesday. ‘But, yeah, we didn’t think we’d be in the situation of 2–0 down after two and needing to win three.

‘We’ve had to make tough decisions before the series, and we will continue to make tough decisions if we feel like that’s what’s going to give us the best chance of winning a game.’

For now, Stokes is sticking to the line that Bashir remains England’s first-choice spinner, yet that position is collapsing under the weight of reality. And there are many on the county circuit who have been itching to say: ‘We told you so.’

Bashir has 17 fewer wickets than Graeme Swann did at this point of his Test career - and exactly the same number as Jack Leach, the man he replaced in the side

ESPNCricinfo

Bashir is now in the curious position of possessing an ECB central contract (worth, in his case, not far off £250,000) but no county deal, having been released by Somerset. In 2024, he was loaned to Worcestershire for a game, and took two for 162 against Surrey, with Dan Lawrence carting him for 38 in an over.

Last summer, he managed two wickets at 152 each for Glamorgan, as whispers circulated that no one at Cardiff really wanted him. There have been attempts to fix him up elsewhere, including at Warwickshire and Essex. Nothing has paid off. 

But the domestic game’s reluctance to get involved in what they regard as one of Bazball’s pet projects reflects a broader truth: Bashir is a single-skill cricketer who plays only one format of the game. 

Worse, county pitches barely turn. He has nowhere to hone his trade, nowhere other than the England setup to be told he’s any good. 

Bashir has the peculiar statistical 'honour' of being a far better performer in Tests than the county game, where he averages an eye-popping 89.57 with the ball.

His two matches out here, bowling for both sides during England’s practice match against the Lions, then for the Lions against Australia A, have yielded figures of 49–2–266–2. Plainly, the management have lost faith. If Bashir plays at all in this series, there is a good chance it won’t be while the Ashes are at stake.

It is often the case that a cricketer’s stature grows in inverse proportion to the fortunes of the team who have ditched him. But his absence has rendered external judgment no kinder.

The former England fast bowler Steve Harmison depicted him as an unaffordable luxury. ‘Ben Stokes has got a lot on his plate, and I don’t think he needs Shoaib Bashir playing, because it affects his game,’ he told talkSPORT. ‘England need Ben Stokes: they don’t need someone standing at mid-on and mid-off basically doing everything but letting go of the ball.’

England have defended their promotion of Bashir as a necessary response to county cricket’s inability to produce Test-class spinners. Now, confronted by the brutality of an Ashes tour, they have blinked, placing pragmatism before idealism and preferring a more part-time spinner whose 58 first-class matches have brought 50 wickets at 42.

All cricket captains have a plan until Australia punch them in the face. Bashir arrived here without a county. Unless something drastic happens, he will leave wondering whether he still has a country.