And that was kind of, it felt quite celebrated and people were like, what a sensible decision.

in the midst of which they, they, you know, they retired Jimmy Anderson.

So, I mean, listen, when you, when you make, it's very dangerous, I think, to make sweeping comments about how you're going to select in the future.

Um, because you can be a hostage to fortune at any time, but generally speaking, yes, you want to, you want to try and pick the best available team for any assignment.

The reality of it is that that is not always possible and it isn't always smart.

Um, You know, particularly when...

Let's say for England and Australia, and the reason this has come up is because of Australia's recent loss against South Africa.

You should have used your position in the media to voice your opinion for once in a while.

they've been that bad.

Is that insane? Is that a fair opinion? Yeah, I think that's probably fair.

The first game against Pakistan, they were in position to chase down 305.

They will feel that they should have won it and didn't.

429, well, need I say any more? they should have won it and didn't um and then this evening i mean that's that's the the pièce de resistance as far as um throwing away a winning position isn't it or or having a winning position ripped away from you whichever way you care to look at it um they needed 88 with with number 11 at the crease and um Shadab played an absolute blinder you know he even had the comedy of him shaking hands with the England team thinking the game was over before thinking oh hang on I've got a I might as well review it and then a little inside edge that he didn't even know he got saved him and it and it was that that was done from there on in as far as I was concerned on comms you just thought well that's it that's the last the last moment um and there wasn't another one for England there Great scenes.

I mean, listen, England's woes aside, and we'll get into that in a bit more detail in a moment, but the whole tri-series has been fantastic.

It's been lots and lots of good games, some great cricket, enthusiastic crowds.

and it's particularly of these last two because it's very easy to go shrank about it unbelievably well that's an all-time it happens shadow's battered unbelievably well that's an all-time it happens i've been trying to square off the two things of harry brooks known as this like fantastic tactician and whether this is a kind of mark against his copy book or just things happen

That's skin in the game.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Hang on.

But I, I haven't finished yet.

I didn't go- Um, I was due to do my first ever commentary gig on, on the World Cup.

I was an England contracted player for test matches, wasn't involved in the World Cup, but was due to start my stint in Zimbabwe.

Mm

Mm.

I, I think that's unquestionable.

Um, if you think about sort of f- from the last English summer, England's opening bowler would've been Woakes and Archer, or Woakes and Atkinson, or whatever it might be.

Um, you know, the, with no disrespect at all to, to Chris Woakes, but Ollie Robinson, um, brings a totally new dimension to, to England with the new ball, which was something they were sorely lacking in the winter with the Ashes.

Um, they've got a couple of, couple of batters who have...

One who's come back into the side.

Well, both who've come back into the side in Cox and Lawrence, who've given us a bit of extra depth and will give us a- another talking point, um, as to what the 11 might look like when Jacob Bethell comes back.

People can score runs, can't they?

Does this require- Will Joe Root now be going into the nets and trying something new technically to get past this trapped on the crease thing?

Yeah, absolutely he will.

Um, he, he didn't, he, he hasn't scored as many runs as he has without, without doing so.

I mean, the, the other way to look at it is that if you've played as many test matches as his, as he has, scored as many runs as he has, and had as many innings as he has, at, at some point you're gonna, you're gonna run into a little bit of a, of an issue that looks like a major or would be a major problem for somebody else.

Um, again, the likelihood of him running into blokes bowling 74 miles an hour with a keeper up in South Africa are pretty, they're pretty slight.

So I, I wouldn't, uh, once Edgbaston's come and gone, um, he probably won't be spending a massive amount of time worrying about it.

But you never know.

Okay

Mm

... on the part.

And Robinson would have, had he not had the, the knee niggle, would have played at the Oval.

Um, which then more than likely would have meant that he'd have played at Trent Bridge, and England would have been a stronger side for it in, in all three of those test matches.

He, he is, um, he's unbelievably important because, because he allows England then to, to pick and choose what facets they want from the other three.

Because they can absolute- They give him a new ball.

They know exactly what he's gonna do, how he's gonna bowl.

[laughs]

Career best eight for 80.

Ca- career best eight for 80.

Barely, barely bowled a bad ball.

Didn't get cut, didn't get pulled nearly all Test match.

Was just, was just absolutely sensational.

At one point I think he had in, in his first 10 overs in, uh, Pakistan's first innings, I think the, the leave percentage for Pakistan was about 7%.

And, and he's not getting clipped through the leg side.

He's like, "I'll do it"

Looking at this squad, what does it say to you about the state of English cricket and Joe Root's hopes?

[laughs] Um, okay.

So the 16-man squad is, is, i- is...

Well, it's either very comprehensive or it's, or it's incomprehensible.

[laughs] Trying to cover lots and lots of bases and trying to cover the three men that Ben Stokes was in the, in the, in the team.

M- my first take is, is good luck, Joe, really, because, uh, you're, you're in that position that many England captains have been in before and, and Joe himself was in, um, over much of his 65 test match period in charge, whereby if Ben Stokes, and Ben Stokes was the all-rounder then and, and, uh, and has until recently been now.

When he is not available, when that player is not available, um, in England teams that rely on having four seamers plus a spinner for the, for the balance of the team is nigh on impossible.

Um, did anything catch your eye in particular across the Ben Stokes conversation?

Your initial reaction, good decision, bad decision from the ECB?

Um, I, I think it's a good decision.

I thought, I thought the minute that he quit the Chennai job, um, which was about five minutes after [laughs] the announcement that Co- or that McCullum was, was being stood down, I figured that that might be the most likely outcome.

Um, and that's as it's happened.

Um, I have, uh, you know, my, my thoughts about it are pretty positive, I think, in, in terms of, in terms of his CV.

Obviously, there's ob- there's the obvious thing about him not having done red-ball cricket as a coach in the last 18 years or whatever it is.

But he's, you know, 100-odd test matches, 80 of them as captain.

Should Fleming be here for that, that series? I think that's the more direct question.

If we're being led to believe that these are the kind of main people, what's, what's the hold up? Why, why, why can't there be a coach in position ahead of this Pakistan series if, as you mentioned, we've got 10 tests before the Ashes and a third then-

Um, I, I can't answer that.

I don't know.

Um, I have no idea.

That, that would be between the two parties, wouldn't it, in terms of the negotiations around the package and how long the contract is and all the rest of it.

Um, and, and as I mentioned before in a previous pod, you can understand why there is some hesitancy.

And because there would be some hesitancy, the, the, the, the terms of the, of the deal Would be, or the two, the, the deal being sought by the party that, that is going for the job would tend to be exceptionally and exorbitantly favorable, which would then slow things down as far as the ECB are concerned.

That sounds quite cool.

We need to find a new coach, who then needs to find a new captain, and their first choice ruled himself out.

Yeah.

Um, I, I think, I actually think, defending them a little bit, that I don't think that they made a, a, that you can accuse them of having made a mesh- mess of it for the last six months.

What they were hoping was that in not sacking everybody post-Ashes, or letting it ride until the T20 World Cup was over and done with, was that the act would be cleaned up and that, you know, the, the guys who were incumbent would be able to get through the summer, um, without soiling themselves.

Um, I think we might have said at the, you know, the, months ago in the pod that, okay, they, they've, they've got another chance at it, but they're gonna have to be spotless through the summer.

And of course they were, they were anything but.

So they hoped against hope that they wouldn't have to do what, what's been done, i.e. sack the coach.

... etiquette either

Who's gonna replace, uh, Brendon McCullum? What, what's it all gonna mean? What other things could change? Is this the end of the drama? So first things first, and kind of briefly, is this the right decision? Are you content with it? And then who do you think should be the man to replace him?

I think that it's, it's all a bit of a mess because if you were going to replace, obviously the, the, the captaincy was an unknown at the time, but if that replacement was on the cards to be done, then probably it should have been done before the summer started.

And I understand that obviously Richard Gould was interviewed during the, the women's test at, at Lords, and we had the issue that we spoke about at the time, Yas and I, that at the end of the Ashes, they only had a very short period of time before the, the T20 World Cup.

The T20 World Cup actually went pretty well, us, uh, almost getting to the final in that one.

Um, and so therefore the sort of like the clamor for change died down, and the reason for change kind of died down at the time.

But now we're in a situation whereby we have no test match captain, we have no test match coach.

The trium- the triumvirate of Key, McCullum, and Stokes were, were so in simpatico from the, from the very beginning.

Rob Key, is he lucky to remain in post? Or as Richard Gould said, it's one of the toughest jobs in English sports, and the, he wants someone there kind of working on a very long-term scale.

They would've liked to have seen a li- little bit more action, but, uh, how do you surmise that last day's play?

Well, I mean, let- let's start with today.

Um, England wrapped it up.

I think everybody expected they probably would.

New Zealand only had five wickets left, needing 199, which is a heck of a lot of runs given, um, what we've seen the ball do on- on this surface and the quality of the bowlers.

A little bit surprised that they didn't sort of try to throw a, you know, a- a counterpunch a bit earlier, maybe send Jamieson up the order to come in once Blundell was knocked over.

And just try to put England on the back foot.

Yeah.

That's like 12 test matches.

That's a long way away, right? And so, and so therefore if, say you give it to Joe instead of Harry, it's a, it's a short-term thing.

Now surely- Given everything that's gone on, you would want to, you want to be setting out plans for, for something a little bit meatier and a bit longer than that.

And, and the answer to your question, is it an on-field role or is it an off-field role? It's both.

It's absolutely both.

And, you know, look, there is no such thing as a good captain or a bad captain, right? A lot of these things are very much subjective, and they're very much dependent on the, on the armory that you have at your disposal in terms of how many top quality batters you've got, how many bowlers you have, um, who can take their wickets at 25 or less.

Um, you know, whether you have Shane Warne in your team.

Okay.

Can you talk me through your reaction when you found out the news and kind of your overriding thoughts on it?

Um, yeah, we heard a whisper, um, about 25 minutes before, maybe, maybe half an hour before the, uh, the, the statement was released that that was coming.

Um, and none of us could believe it, actually.

We thought it was a bit of a wind-up.

Um, a- and then we found out that it was gonna be, it was going to come out as, as an official statement at 25 past 3:00, which is exactly what happened.

Um, and nobody, nobody saw it coming whatsoever.

So you, you would imagine that around a test match and given what's happened over the last two and a half weeks, that the rumor mill would have picked up on something and that, and that, that would have been, um, something that, that we would not have been so surprised about, but absolutely not.

[laughs]

We never

really got Brexit in the first place, so it was a betrayal from the Conservative Party.

They didn't deliver the Brexit that we signed up for.

And Butcher fears that ten years on,

Brexit is still insecure.

They're now wanting to get us back into Europe, completely ignoring the 17.4 million people.

You know, we wanted out, and out meant out.

The main question I cannot get my head around, the main thing that's confusing me about this whole incident is if everything's fine, if no one did anything wrong aside from being out past their prearranged bedtime, which in itself is being disputed, if Ben Stokes is fit enough to be back captaining England in two days' time, why did England, the ECB, spend a week basically bringing his mental well-being into question and inferring that he was in serious trouble?

I have no idea.

I really don't know.

I mean, look, none of us are privy to the conversations that Brendan, Rob and Ben Stokes have had.

What we do know is that Ben Stokes hasn't said anything.

What we also know is that Ben was fit enough mentally and physically to make himself available to play for Durham at the weekend.

And the other thing that we know for certain is that there was, you know, there was no wrongdoing beyond being out beyond the curfew.

How, how is this gonna work now if you've got people who are clearly are not seeing eye to eye and more to the point, like, heart to heart?

Your kind of instinct reactions to that.

Yeah, I mean, so I think we might have, we might have touched on this last week, and that despite the fact that it kind of, it, it makes the tale slightly longer, I, I thought looking at, looking at the scores from the Oval, um, and the results from the Oval over the course of the summer so far, that, um, a slight gamble I guess.

But th- this was a gamble being taken before we knew that Ollie Robinson was, was out.

So I would've had Rayan Ahmed batting at seven and then, you know, Archer back in, Baker making a debut because we now know that Baker's playing, and I think that's absolutely right.

You know, if pitch is, is flat but has a bit of carry and, and all the rest of it, then somebody that can, that can, um, do batsmen through the air with pace and a full length as Josh Tongue has made such a success of doing.

Um, you know, if 20 wickets are gonna be a- at the absolute premium in terms of, uh, in terms of winning a test match and winning the series, then, you know, Baker and Tongue with the old ball I think is a, is a terrific call.

The issue comes, a- and, and perhaps the reason why they haven't gone for Rayan Ahmed is because Matt Fisher will be taking the ball with Jofra Archer.

Well, I guess he wasn't taking the new ball, but there we go.

What does success now look like?

Um, I was just, uh, absolutely transported back to Lords at 2017 and, um, and, and thinking, or, or thinking and feeling that this was something utterly extraordinary.

You know, the 17,000, 20,000 people in the ground and the, the noise and the atmosphere and all the rest of it.

Um, so that was extraordinary back then.

That would not be extraordinary now, not, not in the slightest.

You would expect that.

Um, you'd expect the grounds, um, around the country from venues big and small, um, to be, to be packed with supporters of, of women's cricket.

Mm-hmm.

Is that in itself, as Ben Stokes, the leader of the England team, a, a sackable offense?

Um, that on its own isn't, no.

That is the, that's the only known at the moment in terms of, uh, absolute facts as to, as to who was to blame for the scuffle, who threw the first punch, who wound who up and everything.

Don't know.

Um, don't care.

I mean, the, the, the protocol, the curfew being broken, um, the England team would not have been under curfew had it not been for the shenanigans during the New Zealand and Australia tours.

And I can imagine that as part of the, um, uh, uh...

Yeah

They would have liked to have seen a li- little bit more action, but, uh, how do you surmise that last day's play?

Well, I mean, let- let's start with today.

Um, England wrapped it up.

I think everybody expected they probably would.

New Zealand only had five wickets left, needing 199, which is a heck of a lot of runs given, um, what we've seen the ball do on- on this surface and the quality of the bowlers.

A little bit surprised that they didn't sort of try to throw a, you know, a- a counter-punch a bit earlier, maybe send Jamieson up the order to come in once Blundell was knocked over.

And just try to put England on the back foot.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm

... with the new ball.

I mean, Eng- England were, were desperately in need of somebody with his sort of accuracy and incisiveness with the new ball.

In the Ashes he wasn't selected.

Um, hi- his, his, I don't know, his attitude to, to, [laughs] to the work sometimes were perhaps a little bit, um, less than was desired by the management.

Uh, and there was a breakdown of trust between the two, and that's the only reason why he wasn't there.

But, you know, give him a new ball and conditions like the ones we've had in this test match here, you would expect him to take wickets.

Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much opened in every test match he's played.

Pretty much opened in every test match.

Uh, and Baker would be another sort of, you know, change bowler, second change, whatever it might be, somebody to, to rifle through the tail, ruffle a few feathers when the ball gets flat.

So it's less about sort of the...

For me, it's less about the, the, the air conditions and the pitch conditions, and a little bit more about what, who are England's best new ball bowlers out of, out of the, the five options that they have.

Um, and I wonder, um, you know, Stokes has been moved down to seven in the batting order.

Jamie Smith's gonna bat at six.

Kind of your gut reaction, are you, are you happy with him lower down, or are we basically is, is, is, is dad getting a bit older and becoming granddad kind of thing?

I find it slightly funny where when the media say that Brendon McCullum should be doing more media, and I'm like, yeah, like that's, that, that would be useful for us.

Yeah, that, I mean, we'd, we'd love that, wouldn't we? 'Cause it gives you a chance to sort of grill him and, and, uh, and, and, and gotcha him about sort of like his, his overall philosophy of running towards the danger and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, look, there were, there were periods, weren't there, in the-In the sort of the, the 2.0 phase.

Um, I'm thinking sort of summer 2024 where, where there was a l- there was a slightly more measured approach to batting, and there was, there was some situational playing and etcetera, etcetera.

Um, and it looked as though there was a gradual progression from, okay, we've got, we've got the players in that we want.

Um, we've had, we've had our fun with sort of like flinging the bat at everything and trying to score at sixes and everything, but now we're gonna play the game in a slightly different way.

And then you get confronted with the, um, uh, 2025 series.

But I think that's an answer in itself, like-

England, you, you-

You, you fly and you play one test.

England players, India wants to go to the one.

It...

My, my problem with the World Test Champion- ship has always been that there is...

Clearly, you can play a five test match series, or a three test match series, or a two test match series, and they all count to the same league table, which is patently nonsense.

Um, so, [laughs] so therefore, if you were gonna...

Mm.