England: Dangerous Words Darren

 

30/03

Darren Lehmann on the County Championship

23/03

🏌️

Stokes backs McCullum and Key in X-rated rallying cry

England captain speaks out as ECB gives management behind disastrous Ashes tour mandate to continue until 2027 series

Will Macpherson

Ben Stokes publicly backed Brendon McCullum and Rob Key with a rallying cry about the future of the England team after all three were retained following the review into the Ashes tour debacle.

At the end of a day in which Richard Gould, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said it would have been the “easy” decision to sack McCullum as head coach, captain Stokes cut through the noise with a punchy Instagram post laying out his commitment to the job.

In a statement issued alongside a picture of himself with McCullum and England managing director Key, Stokes said on Instagram: “Being England captain is the greatest honour a player can be given and I do not take it for granted. It has its highs and it has its lows, it makes you want to smile, it makes you want to cry. It completely and utterly consumes you and feels like it’s the only thing in your life at times.

“The last three months has without a doubt been the hardest period of my captaincy journey, it’s tested me in so many different ways and I’m sure every other captain has gone through this as well.

“Baz, Rob and myself have the passion and desire to take this team forward, we are going to give you everything we have, we know we made mistakes along the way and we have learnt from those mistakes, you learn more from failure than success.

“I f-----g love cricket, I f-----g love this team, I f-----g love being England captain and I have got so much more to give to this role and I’m so happy that I get to do it with Baz and Rob.”

Gould and Key had earlier addressed the media at Lord’s, presenting the findings of the “thorough review” they had launched immediately after the Ashes were lost 4-1, including no changes to the management structure apart from the hiring of a fielding coach and a new national selector.

Gould defended the decision not to perform an “easy” football-style sacking of McCullum, but accepted it “may not be popular” with fans.

“I think what we’ve seen is a determination from all those involved to adapt and evolve, to understand that there are different ways of doing things and through the disappointment and difficulties of the Ashes to learn from that,” Gould said. “We’ve got a lot of people, yes, hurt by what went on during the Ashes, but equally determined to now put things right and looking forward to seeking revenge in 2027 [when the next Ashes series takes place].”

England pledged to plan better for Test series, an admission that preparing for the Ashes with a three-day intra-squad match at a club ground in Perth was inadequate, to improve the relationship with county cricket, and promised to clean up the team’s culture.

Gould said that the behaviour of Harry Brook in Wellington, where he was punched by a bouncer hours before captaining the team in an ODI, had become “significantly unprofessional”.

Retaining McCullum

The wilting of England’s once-distinctive playing style and culture under the glare of Ashes cricket, resulting in a dismal result against an under-strength Australian side, incensed large portions of the cricketing public. Four years ago, an Ashes series surrendered 4-0 against the challenging backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic cost coach Chris Silverwood and director of cricket Ashley Giles their jobs, with Joe Root stepping down as captain a couple of months later.

This time, it is different. When justifying the decision to retain en bloc a management group who have failed to win any of their four marquee Test series – against Australia and India – since taking over in 2022, Gould cited the example of his father, the former football player and manager Bobby Gould.

“We keep a very close eye on all of our supporters,” Gould said when asked if he had a gauge on the mood of England fans. “We are not going to select or deselect management based on a popularity campaign. We’re going to do it based on good judgment, objective views.

“My old man was a football manager. Sacking was part of the job. It didn’t necessarily do the right thing. Moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do. That’s not the route that we’re going to take. I’ve seen the driving ambition and determination that we’re lucky enough to have within our leadership group to take the lessons from the Ashes and move on forward.

“It may not be the popular route. It may not be the easiest route, but I think it’s the right route.”

Gould said there had been “a lot of consideration as to what is the right mix of leadership”, but turned back to football again when saying: “Cricket is a very unique sport in that it takes a team of leadership. It’s not like football where there’s a single point of failure or success with a manager.”

So McCullum, Key and Stokes have been given a mandate until the end of 2027 with minor tweaks around the fringes. Gould said he did not want any of them to be “too different”, because “to be an appropriate leader, you have to be authentic”.

Key was insistent that there had been no “big bust-up” between McCullum and Test captain Stokes, although it was clear during the Ashes that the two men were diverging in terms of playing style and messaging to players and fans. Gould added that “we are all pulling in the same direction and [are] eager to evolve”.

Culture

McCullum says he runs an “informal environment”, which critics believe is lax, and too heavily reliant on unwinding with alcohol. This culture was pushed at times by players. McCullum took the team for a mid-series break to the Queensland resort of Noosa, where players drank freely in public view. The team’s unprofessionalism, which was under scrutiny even before the Brook incident, was revealed by Telegraph Sport shortly after the conclusion of the Ashes.

“There was certainly some instances, and particularly the one that we dealt with in New Zealand, which was regarded as significantly unprofessional, and we took action at that particular time,” Gould said.

Key and Gould confirmed that a new charter was in place around player behaviour.

“We want to give people the opportunity and the freedom to make their own decisions, but sometimes we also need to provide them with more strict parameters to work with them,” Gould said.

Key added: “It’s not going to be an easy fix. This is not just a problem for the England team, this is throughout the game.

“You can treat everyone like schoolkids, and they rebel. I’m not going to solve this problem just myself, it’s something we need to do as a game.”

Selection

An advert has gone out for a new “national selector”, effectively replacing Luke Wright, who stepped down for personal reasons after the Ashes. This individual will fit into a complex selection structure alongside a network of scouts and team management.

Key refuted the idea that, for instance, Shoaib Bashir was selected on the back of Stokes seeing a clip on social media of him bowling on Instagram. He added that the loyalty of the selection policy had meant “a lack of consequence for substandard performance”.

“That’s one of the things that we overplayed,” he said. “We did it for a reason, but the pendulum has probably swung too far.”

The counties

Part of the changes to selection will be a stronger connection with the county game. Key addressed county executives last Thursday, and will meet with directors of cricket next week. Domestic leaders have been critical of what they perceive to be a broken relationship between England and the County Championship in terms of selection. Key said positions were up for grabs in the early part of the summer, ahead of the Test series against New Zealand, which he sees as the start of a “new cycle”.

History repeats itself

While Gould would not reveal who the ECB had contacted to feed into the report, he did say that it had pored over previous Ashes reviews, including the Schofield Review of 2006-07. The upshot was that only “30-40 per cent” of this review’s findings were actually new.

“Therein lies parts of the lesson,” Gould said. “We need to stop having to relearn old lessons. “We need to make sure that we’ve got the personnel and the team and the management in there that can take those through and not have to relearn the whole time.”

07/03

James Wallace - The Guardian

‘I’m available for discussion’: Kevin Pietersen puts himself up for England role

• Former batter says Rob Key has sounded him out before

• ‘I would never not look at helping England out’

• 
  

Kevin Pietersen has said he would “absolutely” consider becoming part of a future England cricket coaching set-up and revealed Rob Key has ­previously sounded him out a couple of times.

While Brendon McCullum, along with managing director Key, is expected to get the ­backing of the ­England and Wales Cricket Board to continue despite a ­winter of overall discontent, it is ­understood that there is room to tweak the ­coaching group.

“Rob Key has mentioned it on a couple of occasions, but we’ve never really got to that position where it’s like: ‘OK, what should we do here?’” said Pietersen, who won the Ashes and T20 World Cup with England. “If Rob Key called me and said: ‘I want to talk to you properly,’ then I’ll talk to him, definitely. I’m available to have the discussion.”

Pietersen, who was ­speaking before England’s T20 World Cup semi-final defeat by India on behalf of the International Cricket ­Council’s official accommodation partner, ­Marriott Bonvoy, is a mentor for Delhi Capitals in the upcoming Indian ­Premier League and is enthusiastic about working with household names and homegrown talents.

His fellow Ashes 2005 ­teammate Marcus Trescothick holds the ­position of England men’s batting coach and has been a key figure during McCullum’s four-year tenure. During the recent 4-1 Ashes defeat, Trescothick was duly rolled out in press conferences to defend England’s aggressive tactics with the bat. Pietersen has been a vocal critic of the approach in Test cricket but is seemingly keen to get his hands dirty and help out.

“I would absolutely look at it in the longest form of the game and try to help these guys understand that there is a way that you can play,” said Pietersen. “Tactically, you’ve got to understand the situation. I know I’ve got all the credentials. I know I do. I’ve worn every single T-shirt. I’ve failed. I’ve won. I’ve done everything in the game and I would never, ever not look at helping England out.”

Looking back at the Ashes defeat, Pietersen believes that England could have made the Test matches a lot closer. “In the shortest form of the game, sure, play without fear, go out there, be brave, be reckless, be careless, be whatever you want. In Test match cricket, you cannot do that.

“I did it at times, yes, and I learnt. I also knew my responsibility of ­making sure that in certain situations, in a lot of situations, I defended that ball straight. I hit back at the stumps for a long time in my career. I didn’t run down the wicket against Australia’s fastest bowlers and try and slog them for six first ball! I knew my limitations.

“You’ve got to build an innings. I built innings in Test match cricket. When I got in, sure, I had some fun.”

01/03

Lions Call off Game in UAE

04/02

McCullum on the defensive

01/02

Zero Tolerance - Simon Hughes

30/01

Tongue involved...

16/01

England's post-Ashes inquiry: How it will work, who is in charge and what we should expect

GEORGE DOBELL: Everything from the future of the leadership team, the culture and certain selection decisions will be debated over the coming weeks

No sooner had England's latest disastrous Ashes campaign in Australia concluded than the ECB management initiated a review into events leading up to the series.

Everything from the future of the leadership group .... the rest is behind a paywall

09/01

insouciance

/ɪnˈsuːsiən(t)s,ɪnˈsuːsiɒ̃s/

noun

1. casual lack of concern; indifference.

Boozeball

Harry Brook fiasco symbolic of McCullum’s ‘it’ll be right, mate’ insouciance

If England head coach refuses to change after Ashes shambles, then the man himself must be changed

Oliver Brown

An alarming sign of Brendon McCullum’s attitude to coaching England came on the Adelaide outfield, where, with Australian players uncorking the champagne behind him and the urn surrendered in record-equalling time, he made his soaring pitch to keep his job. “It’s a pretty good gig, it’s good fun,” he shrugged. “You travel the world with the lads and try to play some exciting cricket and achieve some things.” He sounded as if he were describing life on board a cruise ship, where the pursuit of sporting glory was just some trifling distraction from the boys-on-tour vibe. And in return, he expected to keep a minimum £500,000-a-year salary, with zero accountability.

Any serious organisation would be disabusing him of this delusion today. But the message from the England and Wales Cricket Board is that it is still on board with Baz, that Baz is capable of cultural evolution, that there will simply be a few quiet behind-the-scenes tweaks before the grand unveiling of Bazball 2.0. Until the past 24 hours, this position might just have been tenable. Not now, though. Not after Telegraph Sport’s exposure of a culture so dismally amateurish that Harry Brook, the white-ball captain, felt at liberty on the night before a one-day international against New Zealand to go to a nightclub, with that bone-headed decision leading to him being punched by a bouncer.

There are certain moments in the lifespan of England teams when they are defined less by their feats on the field than by their fecklessness off it. It happened in football ahead of Euro ’96, where a lairy warm-up trip to Hong Kong was best captured by photographs of Paul Gascoigne on his back in a bar on a so-called “dentist’s chair”, having spirits sluiced down his throat.

It happened in rugby, too, with the misadventure of England’s 2011 World Cup campaign in New Zealand summed up by players’ antics at Altitude bar in Queenstown. Mike Tindall had married into the Royal Family only a couple of months earlier, but he and several others seized on a rare night of mid-tournament freedom by attending an event called the “Mad Midget Weekender”, where revellers could combine drinking with a spot of casual dwarf-tossing.

A similar notoriety now attaches itself to the 2025-26 Ashes tour, otherwise known as “Bazballers Go Large”. Just when you thought they had peaked in Noosa, where Ben Duckett – who seemed not to know where he was or how to get home – was offered an Uber to the nets, along comes Brook to up the ante with the revelation of his wild evening in Wellington. For the ECB, the questions thrown up by these multiple transgressions are serious.

When Rob Key, the director of cricket, conducted his media briefings in Melbourne last month, he said, in reference to a video of players drinking on the night when Brook later had his altercation with a security heavy: “There wasn’t any action, like formal action. I didn’t feel like that was worthy of formal warnings. But it was probably worthy of informal ones.”

And yet there had been formal action. Brook, in the wake of his actions on the very evening Key was addressing, was fined around £30,000 by the ECB, the maximum amount possible. So why did Key not disclose this? Why was there apparent omerta over the incident for more than two months?

There has been an incredulous reaction here in Australia, with one report turning the heat on “senior English officials who approved the cover-up”. It highlights the degree of discomfort for the governing body, with the problems exposed by the Brook story not just cultural but institutional.

The fiasco is embodied most vividly by McCullum. It is not simply that the 44-year-old New Zealander has presided over a shambles of a tour, but that his reaction to losing the Ashes 4-1 is one of casual, “it’ll be right, mate” insouciance. He was adamant in the aftermath of defeat in Sydney that he was “not for being told what to do” and snapped at a perfectly reasonable question about whether he could change his ways.

His demeanour during matches, chewing gum and draping his feet over the balcony railing, has become symbolic of the loucheness of the enterprise. Somebody should have offered to sponsor the soles of his shoes, as this is about the only angle from which viewers ever see him.

Except the power base he has built is precarious. It was striking how Ben Stokes seemed to put distance between himself and the deluded head coach by emphasising the “damage we did to ourselves” and his regrets about “adding to our own downfall”. The Bazball Kool-Aid is now an unpalatable potion, with the necessity for change self-evident. We are not in the 1980s any longer, when drinking scrapes were an accepted part of tour tapestry. This is an era where the best teams throw everything possible at winning, from data analysts to watt bikes to cryotherapy chambers. The fact that McCullum neglected even the absolute basics, failing to appoint a fielding coach or to schedule proper dry runs of the conditions England would face in Australia, is unforgivable.

There is no shortage of candidates who could replace him. Justin Langer appears desperate for the job, lavishing such praise on Jacob Bethell – “dare I say it, I love him” – that he would clearly jump at the chance to coach England’s latest centurion. A more radical option would be to break the bank for Ricky Ponting, should he be open to the opportunity, with his piercing insight into England’s failings a highlight of Ashes commentary.

Whoever emerges as the frontrunner, it is painfully obvious that the incumbent cannot remain, with McCullum already talking about his resistance to change. If he refuses to change, then it is the man himself who must be changed.

24/12

In Duckett's defence

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.