Brendon McCullum’s strength as England coach has become his weakness

LAHORE — Brendon McCullum gets less impressive with every passing day of his tenure as England’s all-format coach.

Since taking over the white-ball teams at the start of last month, he has lost nine of his 10 matches in charge.

Of those, there have been five successive one-day international defeats – three in India and the two games so far in this Champions Trophy against Australia and Afghanistan here in Lahore.

England’s tournament is now over just five days after it started and they still have one match left to play, what is now a dead rubber against South Africa in Karachi on Saturday.

McCullum worked wonders with England’s Test team when he took over in the summer of 2022. His positive mindset, aggressive approach and no-fear attitude having the desired effect to lift a side who had won one match in 17 off the canvas.

But it hasn’t worked in white-ball cricket, with captain Jos Buttler saying revealingly after this failure to chase down 326 against Afghanistan: “It has been a familiar theme. A more firing and confident team would have got over the line here.”

Confidence is something everyone assumed the effervescent McCullum would bring to this group of players who have struggled badly since the start of the 2023 World Cup in India.

For a man who is famous for radiating good vibes, an injection of positivity was needed. But for a combination of reasons it just hasn’t happened and he is now seeing his reputation damaged.

His first mistake was backing Buttler as captain. Loyalty to a close friend is admirable. But it’s obvious now that England’s white-ball set-up needed a clean break once the decision was made to sack former coach Matthew Mott last summer.

After this latest tournament-ending defeat, even Buttler admitted he is now considering his future and wondering whether he is part of the problem.

The truth is he should have gone after leading England in two failed World Cup campaigns, the T20 debacle in the Caribbean last summer following the 50-over horror show in India the previous winter.

It would have given McCullum a clean slate to start with rather than a hangover from a failed regime.

The New Zealander’s approach, stocking the team with fast bowlers and banking on a high-risk aggressive approach with the bat, also seems outdated.

This is the formula that worked for the New Zealand team he captained to the 2015 50-over World Cup final. It was highly successful back then too. Yet that was a decade ago. The game has evolved and teams are now smarter.

It’s worth noting that before this job it had been three years since he last coached in white-ball cricket. Has he fallen behind the times? It certainly looks that way.

The use of three right-arm quicks is a particular weakness, one that makes England’s attack one-dimensional and easy for opposition batters to read. Where is the variation?

Reece Topley, a left-arm seamer who was England’s best bowler at the 2023 World Cup before injury struck, should have been in this squad.

The gamble on doubling up with Liam Livingstone and Joe Root as the fifth bowler in the attack was also an obvious risk, one that was badly exposed when Mark Wood pulled up injured during this defeat by Afghanistan.

There is sadly no all-rounder with the quality of 2019 World Cup winners Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali or Chris Woakes currently available. But a solution needs to be found.

Is it worth trying Sam Curran again, a player whose recent form and career stats are not amazing but a left-arm seamer who at the age of 26 might improve dramatically with the right coach guiding him?

And what about Liam Dawson, a non-playing member of those winning squads in 2019 ODI and 2022 T20 World Cups who appears to have given up on international cricket and is happy earning as much as he can on the franchise circuit?

It’s surely worth a conversation to try and tempt him back, especially with a T20 World Cup on the sub-continent this time next year.

Most worryingly though is McCullum’s failure to get even one ounce of improvement out of this white-ball group.

Where once his laid-back attitude was seen as a strength that enabled the Test team to play with freedom, it can now be seen as a weakness.

The perception now is that actually, this group, with McCullum leading it, are not relaxed or playing with freedom but just undisciplined and a little loose.

The obsession with golf, the optional training and talk of results not being important does not scan well when results are so terrible.

This may be unfair but public perception is everything when a team are under pressure. Show the fans you care.

McCullum must be given time. No question. And some of this criticism may be unfair. But he needs to learn from this tough start. His reputation depends on it.