Ashes 2025-26.

[backfootpunch]

Another issue here is the lions squad

Why arent the 2nd choice players in the lions squad.

People who could actually get called up like say hameed, leach, cook etc

The Australia A team was the 2nd 11. Ours isnt.

If say Hameed had played that lions game and made runs hed be playing the next test wouldnt he?

As would cook if he got wickets.

Poor planning.

Having those tours at the same time is basically a way to have 30 guys out there to pick from.

[Durhamfootman]

Dobell.....

Like a child who realises too late they should have started their revision months ago, England are about to head into three almost back-to-back Tests knowing they need a miracle to pass. But while it may feel like Brendon McCullum, the England Men's head coach, is gaslighting the entire nation by suggesting they were overprepared going into the Brisbane Test, there maybe a grain of truth in his general point.

Certainly, there's little to be gained by intensive nets and fitness sessions now. That stuff should have happened months ago. It should be ingrained and beyond debate. Just as technical flaws should have been spotted months ago. So, just as you wouldn't want a child to stay up all night before their exam in a late attempt to cram the information into their heads, there's little to be said for extra training sessions now.

England did actually try this in 2013/14. Andy Flower, a proud coach who had built a fine team, was furious at the speed with which it all fell apart. And he reacted in the only way he knew at the time: to work harder and push harder. The result was a training session, just ahead of the Sydney Test, which is legendary in its brutality. Flower positively thrashed the ball at the team in practice. He made them run hard in the sun. He made some changes - Joe Root was among those left out - and he had some frank conversations.

Did it work?

Did it hell. England lost by 281 runs in just three days. So they are probably right to take a few days away and clear their minds now. They're going to need fresh heads and fresh bodies in Adelaide. The rounds of golf they play are not the problem. But McCullum's remarks are perplexing. For one thing, when he says "I firmly believe it [the solution] is not training five days straight in sapping conditions", you might well ask whose decision it was to do so before Brisbane. It was surely his.

More importantly, preparation should have begun long before then. It should have begun before they agreed on an itinerary which saw them warmup for this series with limited-overs games in New Zealand, then play on a slow, flat pitch in a park. It should have begun when they agreed to a tour itinerary which included a day-night warmup match, which didn't fit in with their Test schedule. It should have begun when they picked a keeper who doesn't keep for his county, an opening batter with a first-class average of 31 and a fast bowler in his mid-30s who hadn't played a first-class game for more than a year. Preparation for an Ashes tour begins years - literally years - before the arrival of the team. Worrying about how many net sessions they have in Adelaide is like worrying whether the sausage rolls on the Titanic were cooked through. It's way too late for this stuff.

The fact is, a more sophisticated management team may well have found a way to ensure England had better facilities for their warmup game. They would have pushed Cricket Australia to provide a more appropriate surface for the match against the Lions, or arranged to hire a school, a university or a club so they could do this themselves. They have the money. This is not rocket science. Would it have made any difference? Probably not. This England team have been programmed to think the way to respond to a probing session from a bowler is to try and reverse the pressure. In other words, hit the bowler off their length.

It is this mentality, as much as anything, which is damaging England's chances. And while Stokes has said - and demonstrated - that he requires his team to also know how to soak up pressure, the overriding message was one of counterattacking. Hence, the lines about saving the format and inspiring new supporters. Winning was never enough for this lot.

That all sounds pretty hubristic now, doesn't it?

Coaching has to be about more than sounding like an inspirational poster. Otherwise, McCullum could be replaced by a picture of a dolphin and a John Farnham soundtrack. It has to involve working on technique, too. A more sophisticated management team would have spotted the technical flaws holding back Ollie Pope, Jamie Smith and co long before the Australian bowlers did. And they would have noted Harry Brook's wretched dismissal in the final Test of the series against India and cautioned against ever thinking a game is won until the champagne is drunk and the medals awarded. England, in truth, have made soft decisions for months. And now it's coming back to bite.

There was a lot of talk from McCullum after the Brisbane Test about the team being "strong" and "tough". And, up to a point, we all know what he means. But it's not really about being either of those things. Or certainly not just about that. It's every bit as much about being competent and good. Being tough won't help Pope suddenly develop a robust technique. Just as being tough won't suddenly make Smith an experienced keeper. This language is all wrong. It's the language of the playground. The nightclub. The casino.

This goes to the heart of McCullum, really. He's a gambler. A guy who seems to think only suckers work for their rewards, so instead tries to beat the system with an audacious punt. And sure, there may be some flash nights and great memories. But make no mistake: the house always wins eventually. And no one deludes themselves more than a gambler. So when McCullum said, as he did after defeat on Sunday night, that England were "a bee's d***" away from winning the Ashes of 2023, he is talking about how unfortunate his side were. He's not talking about England's reckless declaration at Edgbaston. Or their reckless reaction to the short ball at Lord's. He's not even talking about how fortunate England were in Leeds when Mark Wood's cameo bailed out his side's batters by adding 70 for the last two wickets. He's talking about how unlucky England were that it rained in Manchester. It's absolutely true to say England were on top of the game. But it's worth remembering Australia were five down when the rain came. Not nine. There was a lot of cricket to be played on a flat wicket. And the most successful sides, like the most successful people, don't trust to luck. England left themselves at the mercy of the Manchester weather. And that is never wise.

It's not really McCullum's fault. He's a symptom, not a cause. For, at the end of the last Ashes series in Australia, Ashley Giles warned: "You can change me, change the head coach, change the captain. But we're only setting up future leaders for failure. That's all we're doing. We're only pushing it down the road." So, what did England do? They sacked the coach, the captain and the director of cricket and put their faith in charismatic leaders. They picked a managing director who had never managed and a head coach who had never coached. They hoped the new management's vibes and bravado could bypass the need for structural reform. When you look at it like this, it's not such a surprise they have ended up in this position.

And the reform of county cricket? Well, over the years, it's been diluted and degraded. It still has value, and it still has charm. But its ability to produce international cricketers has been eroded by the prioritisation of short-term financial gain and a schedule that everyone knows is suboptimal. But you know this already. We all know this. We'll be having the same conversations after the next ODI World Cup (England have sunk to eighth in the ODI rankings under Key and McCullum), too. We need our game's administrators to wrestle with these issues; instead, they have baked in many of the problems of the domestic system by selling the key weeks of the season. Sadly for them, most cricket supporters still judge the success of a governing body by match results, not financial returns. And if you have a presiding body that seems to have accepted winning the big overseas is unlikely, you have a presiding body that has accepted failure.

Maybe England will produce a miracle. They have a player, in Stokes, who has produced a few before. But even if the unlikely happens - and it should be stressed, it really is terribly unlikely - haven't we seen enough by now? If England are to optimise the talent they have available, they require a more mature, more sophisticated management team.

[Durhamfootman]

Melinda Farrell after an interview with Marnus L

Labuschagne believed the most impressive aspect of Australia's victory was the way in which they maximised conditions after losing the toss, batting and bowling when conditions were at their best. It was perhaps most significant when Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland's partnership on day two ensured England were batting under lights.

"I look at that partnership between Starcy and Scott and those moments to get us in a situation where we had the night session on our terms. To shift the momentum from losing a toss in day-night cricket is a really impressive feat as a team.

"We've played a lot of day-night cricket, other teams not so much. But when you lose the toss, you're really in a position, you really get set up to get done in the night session, then they bat in the day, bat through the night session, and then come out, and then bat for another three hours and then put them into the night session. It's an amazing effort from the team."

[sussexpob]

Another issue here is the lions squad. Why arent the 2nd choice players in the lions squad.

England's revamped player pathway that Rob Key signed off on last year removes all detailed mention of the function, role or selection criteria of the Lions, along with any mention of what is expected from county players to elevate to it. Courtesy of Mo Bobat's masterplan for total failure, the ECB deem it more important to assess what 14 year olds are doing at the Bunbury Festival than care about the professional adult game. When Bethell was picked and couldn't even be bothered to play test cricket against Zimbabwe, and P*ssed of to carry the drinks for RCB instead, Bobat was keen to point out that Bethell was a future legend of the game, and referenced the fact he knew it after watching him at Bunbury. The same can be said of McKinney's sudden elevation at of nowhere. Another Bunbury/Super 4 legend - the fact he averaged in the 20s opening the bat last year all season is meaningless, as is the fact he was significantly out-performed by his own team-mates who batted with him in the same games.

The net effect is, the Lions has become a quasi-Creche for players who dont deserve to be there. The pathway is quite literally you have to perform at Bunbury (as of 2018). You have to then perform well enough in the under 17 equivalent set of games. And then you get to the England under 19 squad, at which point the pathway stops. After that, the Lions can just pick who they want. And judging on recent examples, have made their mind up based on the previous two stages between 14 and 16. This pathway is the equivalent of a few days cricket.... have a bad weekend at Bunbury, you can be Don Bradman.... Rob Key don't wanna know. Because the professional adult game is naff.

[Arthur Crabtree]

It's not very persuasive in the long article that last minute practice is pointless. Surely maintaining form and fine tuning technique is crucial. And repeating the stuff you want to be unconsciously repeatable. Given how crucial are the marginals.

And less relevantly, staying up all night doing last minute revision can get you decent A levels.

[sussexpob]

McCullum is out today once again defending the upcoming PGA Noosa Open and the teams preparations, but there seems to be disconnect in ECB Castle, because there are also reports from valid sources (BBC for example) that are saying the ECB have already approached Cricket Australia to discuss a bilateral agreement in the future to ensure the best standard of practice and warm up games for touring sides, to (quoting the BBC) improve the competitiveness of series. I take it even his bosses at the ECB aren't buying any of this sh** then.

After yesterdays "data" moment though, Bazza is trying hard to beat it once again. After insisting his boys can play to the situation and can tough it out, seconds later he answers a question about Jamie Smith's form by pointing out the Adelaide boundaries are small, so Jamie is gonna love it.....

I feel like this tour is turning into some weird Cyberpunk, Rock opera...

[sussexpob]

It's not very persuasive in the long article that last minute practice is pointless. Surely maintaining form and fine tuning technique is crucial. And repeating the stuff you want to be unconsciously repeatable. Given how crucial are the marginals

Assuming you dont by "last minute" mean doing an Andy Flower and putting someone through a military boot camp hours before a game, then it depends. In the Flower case it would be a dumb idea, you don't put someone through ultra intensity work out to prepare them for high intensity work without adequate rest, but we know Andy Flower was an idiot already.

It depends on how fit someone is. Someone at peak fitness would benefit and need little rest. You just mix intensity of sessions, so to use footballers as an example, they train medium, high, medium, high, low, game, day off in a cycle, assuming they play only at weekends. Maintaining fitness builds resistance to fatigue, injury and the need to rest, so yes - someone fit as a fiddle should be practicing as much as possible, with some rest build in to account for games.... 8 days is wayyyyyyyyy too much. Rest days to most athletes means no high intensity, it doesn't mean not training. Extreme endurance sports are different, but most sports follow this pattern.

If you are not at peak fitness, or not close to it, then even lower intensity workouts increase rest requirements. Generally someone of a good base fitness needs a 4 week program to peak, the first one or two weeks are low intensity, but require a lot of rest and recovery because serious resistance only kick in after the 3rd week where you start on the higher intensity stuff.

So to put it simply, if England need the rest they claim they need, then they simply aren't fit. A person fit as a fiddle should be able to walk through even challenging training sessions with regularity.

The irony of all this is, modern sports scientists are all in universal agreement about this. Claiming training hard inhibits your performance is, well..... pretty has-been talk.

[sussexpob]

Modern sports science research also indicates that high intensity training sessions that simulate high stress environments are also key in developing "unconscious repetition", as you put it. Stress response requires people to act more instinctually and without thought, which in turn develops that automatic response in moments of pressure. Bowling 10 overs in 3 days in the local park against your B team in a match with no crowd or cameras, and played with no intensity, is as close to worthless as you can get.

Going to play a First Class side with a small enough crowd to hear every insult, and XI players who would love nothing more than to put a headline in the news they struck first blood on the poms... you can't tell me that isn't a better simulation?

For the record, according to the BBC England trained 3 days after arriving before the first test - the warm up game, and nothing else. Apparently they never train more than 2-3 days before a test, home or away.... Australia played a series v India, or played in season with states, and then had a 5 day camp. Not hard to see which is better.

How can you stay fit and sharp resting half the time.

[andy]

Josh Hazelwood has officially been ruled out of the entire series due to an Achilles problem

[andy]

Mark wood allegedly out of the whole series now as well

[Durhamfootman]

Mark wood allegedly out of the whole series now as well

Confirmed now

perhaps one of the less surprising things to come out of this tour. Maybe I'm being unfair, maybe it is a complete surprise that someone with a horrendous injury record and who has barely been allowed to play any cricket in a year and a half might break down after 11 overs or whatever it was

And it's a shame, because I like Woody a lot, but I doubt anyone outside of the England bubble thought that this might not happen. How many years does he have left on his shiny new England central contract?

[Arthur Crabtree]

I expect England went into this series planning to play Bashir at Adelaide. Now that seems problematic, but assuming he does play, does that mean Jacks is left out? Or will he be left in as a batter.

If they retain Jacks and omit Bashir, that will be a bullseye for criticism should England lose.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Modern sports science research...

Thanks for the info. It's not really fitness I'm thinking about, but technique.

Assuming Bashir comes in for Jacks- who was ok with the bat- then do they rest one or two of the bowlers and bring in Potts and/or Tongue. Is Bethell selectable?

My assumption is they will just bring in Bashir for Jacks and maybe Tongue for Carse.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Disappointing for Wood. Aside from the issue of whether he should be in the squad, he's obviously worked hard to be there and it must be a heartbreaker to be so quickly ruled out the series. I presume he will retire from Tests now.

Might even be a blessing to be going home though.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Matt Fisher will replace him.

Seems Wood intends to keep playing Tests.

Well, if he is still playing them.