Steve Harmison, the former Test fast bowler who once coached his home town Ashington in the lower reaches of English football, reaches for a familiar frame of reference as he tries to make sense of Brendon McCullum.
‘The accountability for the Ashes should have been on the coach,’ he says. ‘In football, McCullum would have been sacked. His charismatic character, the way he is as a person, the way he has been around the English game, has meant he’s kept his job.’
Harmison is speaking to Daily Mail Sport the day after ECB chief executive Richard Gould confirmed English cricket’s worst-kept secret: that McCullum would stay on as all-format coach, despite the debacle in Australia. And Harmison is adamant it is the wrong decision.
‘Having a coach who says he’s not going to apologise for running an “informal operation”… I mean “informal” is Saturday afternoon cricket,’ Harmison says. ‘That’s not elite sport. And I look at the way England have gone in the last 18 months: their captain’s trying to do one thing, their coach wants them to do something different.
‘Rob Key looked a bit shattered. I thought he answered the questions brilliantly at Lord’s on Monday, but is he caught between a rock and a hard place by wanting to back McCullum and keep everybody on the same song sheet? I still think they should have sacked him.
‘I don’t buy the idea that we turned a bit of a corner when we went to Sri Lanka before the World Cup. I mean, look at that Sri Lankan side – I’m sorry.
Brendon McCullum has kept his job as England coach despite the Ashes debacle
Former fast bowler Steve Harmison is baffled by the decision. ‘The buck stops with the coach,’ he says. ‘I wonder if we’ve just dug a bigger hole’
‘It comes back to the fact that I think somebody needed to lose their job because of the planning for Australia. The buck stops with the coach. I wonder if we’ve just dug a bigger hole.’
Harmison, now 47, would love to help turn round the fortunes of the side he represented in 63 Tests and 58 ODIs, taking over 300 wickets in all. He believes there is serious talent in the English game, and says he remains optimistic about the future, especially following the emergence of Jacob Bethell. But he has twice applied to be a national selector – and twice failed.
The first time, more than a decade ago, was a farce: the ECB didn’t believe it was him, later prompting an embarrassed phone call from managing director Paul Downton. The second time was in 2022, not long after Ben Stokes and McCullum joined forces, when – according to Harmison – ‘Rob was looking for somebody who probably wasn’t going to challenge them’.
Older and wiser, Harmison says he’s going to shoulder arms to the latest vacancy, brought about by the resignation of Luke Wright, because he believes his criticisms of the England set-up, mainly as a pundit with talkSPORT, have scuppered any chance.
‘What I’ve been saying, and how I’ve been saying it, would go against me,’ he says. One comment in particular on the Stick to Cricket podcast about the England management’s treatment of fast bowler Mark Wood, another Ashington lad, went down like a bucket of cold sick. Harmison said England were ‘negligent’ regarding Wood and his injuries.
But Harmison would certainly have points to make around the selection table, and uses hard stats to back up his contention that England must drop Zak Crawley: ‘The top three run-scorers in Division One of the Championship last summer were all openers. Dom Sibley got 1,274 runs, Haseeb Hameed 1,258 and Adam Lyth 1,173.
‘I don’t think Brendon will see a great deal of English county cricket before the first Test against New Zealand, when he needs possibly a new wicketkeeper, possibly an opening bowler, and definitely an opening batter.’
He thinks England’s wicketkeeper Jamie Smith should go on loan to another county if Surrey aren’t going to give him the gloves, and that Essex seamer Sam Cook – yet to add to the single cap he won last summer against Zimbabwe – should be the steady opening bowler England need in home conditions, taking the new ball with Jofra Archer, and allowing Josh Tongue, Brydon Carse and Stokes to charge in with fire and pace.
Harmison says it should be the end of the England road for opener Zak Crawley
And that Jamie Smith should leave Surrey on loan if they won’t let him keep wicket
As for Shoaib Bashir, the young off-spinner England groomed for 18 months before ignoring him in Australia, Harmison says he should spend time working on his game with Derbyshire. He believes Liam Dawson or the uncapped Sussex all-rounder James Coles can do a job in the meantime.
And if not McCullum, then who? ‘Andy Flower,’ says Harmison, with little hesitation, citing the work he has done on the T20 franchise circuit as proof he can succeed with England again, more than a decade after his first stint.
Harmison’s reluctance to apply for the selector’s job will deprive the ECB of some in-house trenchancy. But it won’t stop him holding English cricket to account.
