For much of the past fortnight, the question on everyone’s lips was whether Ben Stokes had a future as Test captain.
Stokes returns against New Zealand after successfully arguing the post-match midnight curfew he was said to be in breach of was little more than a phantasm, but what is very real this week is the threat to others’ positions within the England set-up should he be unable to inspire a turnaround at Trent Bridge.
Rob Key, the ECB’s director of cricket, and Brendon McCullum, the head coach, will come under severe pressure for their jobs if this must-win match results in anything but.
This England regime has been run unlike any other, with McCullum himself feeling the need to clarify over the winter that he ran an ‘informal’ rather than ‘casual’ environment.
Key invested in that culture and even argued for its retention during an ECB review in January, meaning that a 4-1 Ashes drubbing had a casualty count of one – Luke Wright, the outgoing selector, it should be remembered, went of his own accord to rebalance his family-work balance.
And the latest off-field drama – call it casual, call it informal, but leaving the setting of curfews ‘ambiguous’ highlighted worrying communication skills – follows an admission from Key that England did not prepare properly for the five-Test series in Australia.
Ben Stokes has returned to the England side with Brendon McCullum stressing that the band were back together again
Add the catalogue of off-field misdemeanours in New Zealand and Australia and it is why this week feels like a tipping point.
One with a piquant twist. Because having failed to publicly back Stokes in the immediate aftermath of the June 8 revelations that he and Gus Atkinson had been caught up in an early-hours incident not of their making, Key and McCullum now need him to be at his inspirational best.
Fresh in the public’s mind will be that Stokes was able to galvanise his players in the 115-run victory over the New Zealanders at Lord’s, with a style based on a more refined form of aggression.
The pressure is on to recreate that kind of performance rather than the capitulation without their talismanic leader at the Oval that took the team into negative equity in terms of results since the start of the 2023 Ashes: 16 victories offset by 17 losses.
On Tuesday morning, McCullum emerged from a chat with Stokes that was said to have lasted more than an hour, declaring that contrary to reports over recent months, their relationship was ‘tight’ and ’it’s nice to have the band back together.’
But when asked whether he was confident of continuing their coach-captain relationship into the second Test series of the summer against Pakistan, starting in August, he said: ‘I’ve said all along, plan as if you live forever, live as if you’ll die tomorrow. You won’t get a different answer from me just because we’re under a bit of pressure. What will be will be.
‘We’re very much focused on this week and trying to get a result from the group of men we’re taking out there. We want to stand there at the end of the Test match and say what an incredible effort for us to be able to beat a very good New Zealand team 2-1.’
McCullum also recalled advice he gave to his close friend Eoin Morgan after England’s woeful World Cup of 2015: ‘Tough times don’t last but tough blokes do’.
But these New Zealanders are hardy men themselves and still intent on reaching next year’s World Test Championship final, having been the competition’s first ever winners in 2021.
While England lost all 12 of the points they claimed at Lord’s as punishment for a woefully slow over rate in the second Test, Henry Nicholls highlighted a difference in the two teams’ cultures by saying of New Zealand’s commitment to avoiding being docked points: ‘I mean, it’s up on the scoreboard, so we can see it and Tom (Latham) obviously does the reminders and I feel like every time we play, we sort of try and finish.’
In addition to the returns of Stokes and Atkinson, England made two other changes to their Oval XI, with spinner Shoaib Bashir picked ahead of Surrey seamer Matthew Fisher and Jamie Smith replacing James Rew behind the stumps following paternity leave.
