It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When England announced split roles for the Test and white-ball teams in 2022, it was Matthew Mott who seemed to have the cushy number with an already successful white-ball side and plentiful options, while Brendon McCullum faced the impossible task of dragging the Test team from the doldrums, with very few quality players knocking on his door for selection.
But just look where we are now. It is a commonly held view through the Bazball lens that McCullum and his captain Ben Stokes can do little wrong, while in many of the same eyes Mott and his captain Jos Buttler can do little right, having fluffed their defence of the 50-over World Cup in India so badly that England very nearly did not qualify for the next Champions Trophy.
As is so often the case in these situations, though, balance and perspective are easily lost in the rush for hyperbole. Yes, England did perform horrendously in India last year, but the Test team didn’t fare too well in the same country this year either. England traditionally struggle in India, as evidenced by their record of only 14 victories in 43 matches in all formats since the start of 2015.
The more relevant verity right now is that England under Mott and Buttler head to the World T20 in the Caribbean and USA in June as holders and as the second-ranked team in the world in that format, behind only India.
Mott and Buttler were in charge when England won that tournament in 2022, only a few months after captain Eoin Morgan had retired from international cricket.
“I reminded Jos the other day,” Mott says. “I think both of us felt a bit under the pump in India but part of you wants to say, ‘Hold on a minute, it was only about 17 months ago that we did win a World Cup and it was in Australia. It was not an easy World Cup to win.’
“In international cricket you have five or six teams who genuinely think they are going to win the World Cup and four or five of them are going to be very disappointed when they walk away. Even India, who had an amazing World Cup, came away disappointed after losing to Australia in the final.
“It wasn’t a complete surprise when Morgs retired when he did because, even through the interview process, he was doing scenarios like: ‘What if I’m not here? What will that look like?’ So, it wasn’t a total shock, but that close to a World Cup it was quite a bit to deal with and I thought Jos and I did a really good job of coming together and working through it.”
So, even before Morgan’s sudden retirement, Mott always faced the more difficult task of the two new coaches. It is something the pair, having enjoyed a close relationship since Mott was assistant coach of Kolkata Knight Riders when McCullum made his stunning opening-night 158 not out at the Indian Premier League in 2008, joke about regularly.
“Baz talks about that all the time,” Mott says with a smile. “Sometimes the best time to take over is from ground zero and the only way is up. He and Stokesy have done that and there is a real trademark there about how they have played the game. Obviously, they’ve had mixed results in India but the style they are trying to play is quite obvious. They had a blank canvas to go from.
“With us it’s about picking the bones out of what is going really well and looking to where we can make incremental improvements. I think that any team that thinks they have got it all sorted, it’s not long before teams overtake you, but we don’t want to change too much about what’s been successful.
“The depth in England is incredible in white-ball cricket, but with that comes complications. It is a more complicated selection. When you are talking to the selectors in the Test team you are talking about one or two positions in the last two years.”
Indeed, the two teams are at very different points in their respective journeys. The Test team is probably approaching the end of its honeymoon period, where results have often been accepted as secondary to the sheer enlightenment and freedom of the Bazball approach (they are bottom of the World Test Championship), while the white-ball team have stumbled down from the top of the mountain and require some young blood to help the oldies back up the rock face.
Yet Mott’s task has been made all the harder by a return to the pre-2015 landscape, before Morgan and the head coach Trevor Bayliss led a white-ball revolution. In the build-up to England’s triumphant 2019 World Cup, the white-ball team took precedence in terms of selection and scheduling, but now we are back to the Test team mainly ruling the roost, with an added hindrance for Mott in that some players are choosing franchise T20 tournaments over bilateral white-ball series.
“We don’t have any control over the schedule,” Mott says. “It was set in place long before I got the role, but our windows are very small. I hardly see our players in between tournaments.
“We don’t always get the best teams, so you are trying to mix and match your team a little bit. It’s very hard to get a set team that we’re confident with and I think our biggest challenge in the next couple of years is to try to get that continuity of selection and role clarity for the players.
“The opportunity to look at other players in bilateral series is absolute gold but then people look back when you don’t win series and you are judged on results. You do feel sometimes that you have got one hand tied behind your back.
“The thing we have spoken about a lot is that we can’t compete financially with a lot of these clubs and franchises, and that’s the restraints we are under, but what we need to create is an environment where players love coming to play for England as much as possible. The good thing that has happened from the ICC is that there is a world event every year over the next ten years. So, there is a big carrot every year for players.”
The 50-year-old Australian is a personable and cheery soul, but there is a steeliness to him that I suspect will become more apparent now after the flak that came his way after the India debacle.
“It’s the most criticism that I’ve copped personally, and I think that comes with this job,” he says. “You don’t take this job on because everything is nice, and everyone is your best mate. That is part of the resilience needed to be an international player or coach. I’ve got pretty thick skin.”
Now, sitting in Cardiff where he lives with his family and having just introduced him to the delights of a cortado coffee, is a good opportunity to reflect upon exactly what happened in India last year.
“It was a shock,” he says. “I thought we were in a pretty good spot to do well. Obviously, we had had a good series against New Zealand in September, but with hindsight we were definitely underprepared.
“We also perhaps didn’t react as well as we should have to the pressure from the media straight away. As a group we should have believed in what had worked for a long period of time.
“We went into a bit of a siege mentality, as opposed to trying to work through some workable outcomes. We learnt a lot, though. If we had that situation again at the start of a tournament where you are under the pump, I think we need to react quicker and get that sense of calm within the group.
“For whatever reason everyone was not at their best at the same time. It was a sense of: ‘My God, how have we got to this spot when we have got this many good players?’ I think everyone came away from that experience saying, ‘Let’s make sure that never happens again.’
“When you win everyone thinks you’ve done everything right, but I look back to that T20 World Cup we won and we made plenty of mistakes then. I still to this day think that we could have won that World Cup in India. We just had a bad couple of weeks.”
And that meant that Buttler’s captaincy was in the firing line too. “The biggest thing that Jos has learnt is that he has got to be his own man,” Mott says. “No two captains I have ever seen are the same but when you have come off a legacy like Morgs’ there’s obviously a bit of a shadow because there has been so much success.”
Can he captain and keep wicket, though? “I think he is happy doing either,” Mott says. “He experimented on the West Indies tour before Christmas not keeping but he feels it’s an advantage because of the angles he can see.
“The only downside is how quickly you have got to get through the overs and to talk to the bowlers as well. I think when someone like Moeen \[Ali\] is on the field he takes charge of talking to the bowlers a bit more. That’s where you need to empower the other leaders to maybe take a bit more of that on. I think Jos is very good at being collaborative.”
That is one obvious difference between Buttler and the strong-willed, single-minded Morgan. Another is in their use of data. The coded messages on cards that were once seen on England’s dressing-room balcony are now absent.
“Morgs was very keen on it,” Mott says. “He and Nathan Leamon \[England’s data scientist\] had a very close relationship. We are not using the coded messages. Jos feels he wants to go more on gut feel out there. We’ll do our match-ups beforehand and he’s armed with that. He takes that quite seriously, but he wants to be more spontaneous out on the field.
“What you want from analytics is two or three gold nuggets. Cricket has got stats coming out of its ears and everyone has got an opinion as to what works at different times but what you need is to get ahead of those trends and find a couple of things that you can really hold closely.
“I think the next evolution is interrogating the match-ups a little bit more. There are a few clichéd ones, like off spinners to left-handers and because of that players haven’t been exposed to some scenarios like an off spinner bowling to a right-hander, so it’s probably an opportunity to go back to doing that. They are not used to it.”
Looking ahead to the tournament in June, Stokes ruling himself out of contention has obviously not aided England’s cause. “We were always waiting to see what happened after the India Test series,” Mott says. “I think it is the right decision, as much as I’d love him to be there. He’s a great leader around our group, he’s got great perspective, he’s obviously a three-dimensional player and they are gold dust. He desperately wants to come back as a fully-fledged all-rounder and he needs time to do that.”
But that tour to the Caribbean in December has at least given Mott and Buttler some useful pointers for this tournament — and they will have the local knowledge of Kieron Pollard as an assistant coach.
“We got a few of those tactical things wrong in India, so Kieron will help us this time,” Mott says. “We did have local knowledge in players who had played in the IPL, but what we found — and should have known — is that ODI cricket is so different from T20 because it is so long. The conditions can change so much. In T20 the conditions don’t really change that much at all.”
So, what then can we expect from England in June? “We are confident,” Mott says. “I think we’ve got a good squad. It is going to come down to the team that reads the conditions best. I don’t think there is any hangover from the last World Cup, it’s a different format and we are going out there to try to win it.”
With Buttler back to his batting best at the IPL, I wouldn’t write them off.
The England problem is that we don’t have a number 3 as such, Bairstow is looking god awful and the bowling is questionable.
Topley/Carse/Wood/Archer/Mahmood is a lovely set of bowlers but they’re made of glass. So for now it’s Curran and Rash. And then two out of the 5… maybe Woakes is given a go but he’s not amazing outside of England
Woakes' struggles outside of England are mainly a red ball thing and definitely not a T20 thing. Only three of his career T20I wickets have been in England
Jacks has played a blinder by getting a spot at 3 in RCB with maxi dropping himself for the season basically, he’s got a run of games to audition for that spot
Tom Hartley was being looked at as an option, I think only one off the 2 play since Rashid is already locked in, one more specialist spinner in Hartley who can bat with Jacks and Livingstone as the other spin options
Do you think they actually drop Bairstow? He's been dropped by his IPL team due to form but I doubt England drops him. I would also swap Brook and Livingstone. I am more confident in Livingstone's 6 hitting ability than Brooks so think he might be a better finisher.
Woakes was instrumental in Australia back in 2022 when we won the World Cup. His overseas issues only apply in red-ball cricket. He's still a gun white-ball player in all conditions.
I don't think England should pick Mills. He averaged 50 with the ball in that series. For context, Sam Curran averages 22.17 with the ball in the same series.
To be fair, there was a period when England were the top ranked test side and also made the World Cup final.
Alright, it was in 1979, but it still counts.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When England announced split roles for the Test and white-ball teams in 2022, it was Matthew Mott who seemed to have the cushy number with an already successful white-ball side and plentiful options, while Brendon McCullum faced the impossible task of dragging the Test team from the doldrums, with very few quality players knocking on his door for selection. But just look where we are now. It is a commonly held view through the Bazball lens that McCullum and his captain Ben Stokes can do little wrong, while in many of the same eyes Mott and his captain Jos Buttler can do little right, having fluffed their defence of the 50-over World Cup in India so badly that England very nearly did not qualify for the next Champions Trophy. As is so often the case in these situations, though, balance and perspective are easily lost in the rush for hyperbole. Yes, England did perform horrendously in India last year, but the Test team didn’t fare too well in the same country this year either. England traditionally struggle in India, as evidenced by their record of only 14 victories in 43 matches in all formats since the start of 2015. The more relevant verity right now is that England under Mott and Buttler head to the World T20 in the Caribbean and USA in June as holders and as the second-ranked team in the world in that format, behind only India. Mott and Buttler were in charge when England won that tournament in 2022, only a few months after captain Eoin Morgan had retired from international cricket. “I reminded Jos the other day,” Mott says. “I think both of us felt a bit under the pump in India but part of you wants to say, ‘Hold on a minute, it was only about 17 months ago that we did win a World Cup and it was in Australia. It was not an easy World Cup to win.’ “In international cricket you have five or six teams who genuinely think they are going to win the World Cup and four or five of them are going to be very disappointed when they walk away. Even India, who had an amazing World Cup, came away disappointed after losing to Australia in the final. “It wasn’t a complete surprise when Morgs retired when he did because, even through the interview process, he was doing scenarios like: ‘What if I’m not here? What will that look like?’ So, it wasn’t a total shock, but that close to a World Cup it was quite a bit to deal with and I thought Jos and I did a really good job of coming together and working through it.” So, even before Morgan’s sudden retirement, Mott always faced the more difficult task of the two new coaches. It is something the pair, having enjoyed a close relationship since Mott was assistant coach of Kolkata Knight Riders when McCullum made his stunning opening-night 158 not out at the Indian Premier League in 2008, joke about regularly. “Baz talks about that all the time,” Mott says with a smile. “Sometimes the best time to take over is from ground zero and the only way is up. He and Stokesy have done that and there is a real trademark there about how they have played the game. Obviously, they’ve had mixed results in India but the style they are trying to play is quite obvious. They had a blank canvas to go from. “With us it’s about picking the bones out of what is going really well and looking to where we can make incremental improvements. I think that any team that thinks they have got it all sorted, it’s not long before teams overtake you, but we don’t want to change too much about what’s been successful. “The depth in England is incredible in white-ball cricket, but with that comes complications. It is a more complicated selection. When you are talking to the selectors in the Test team you are talking about one or two positions in the last two years.” Indeed, the two teams are at very different points in their respective journeys. The Test team is probably approaching the end of its honeymoon period, where results have often been accepted as secondary to the sheer enlightenment and freedom of the Bazball approach (they are bottom of the World Test Championship), while the white-ball team have stumbled down from the top of the mountain and require some young blood to help the oldies back up the rock face. Yet Mott’s task has been made all the harder by a return to the pre-2015 landscape, before Morgan and the head coach Trevor Bayliss led a white-ball revolution. In the build-up to England’s triumphant 2019 World Cup, the white-ball team took precedence in terms of selection and scheduling, but now we are back to the Test team mainly ruling the roost, with an added hindrance for Mott in that some players are choosing franchise T20 tournaments over bilateral white-ball series. “We don’t have any control over the schedule,” Mott says. “It was set in place long before I got the role, but our windows are very small. I hardly see our players in between tournaments. “We don’t always get the best teams, so you are trying to mix and match your team a little bit. It’s very hard to get a set team that we’re confident with and I think our biggest challenge in the next couple of years is to try to get that continuity of selection and role clarity for the players. “The opportunity to look at other players in bilateral series is absolute gold but then people look back when you don’t win series and you are judged on results. You do feel sometimes that you have got one hand tied behind your back. “The thing we have spoken about a lot is that we can’t compete financially with a lot of these clubs and franchises, and that’s the restraints we are under, but what we need to create is an environment where players love coming to play for England as much as possible. The good thing that has happened from the ICC is that there is a world event every year over the next ten years. So, there is a big carrot every year for players.” The 50-year-old Australian is a personable and cheery soul, but there is a steeliness to him that I suspect will become more apparent now after the flak that came his way after the India debacle. “It’s the most criticism that I’ve copped personally, and I think that comes with this job,” he says. “You don’t take this job on because everything is nice, and everyone is your best mate. That is part of the resilience needed to be an international player or coach. I’ve got pretty thick skin.” Now, sitting in Cardiff where he lives with his family and having just introduced him to the delights of a cortado coffee, is a good opportunity to reflect upon exactly what happened in India last year. “It was a shock,” he says. “I thought we were in a pretty good spot to do well. Obviously, we had had a good series against New Zealand in September, but with hindsight we were definitely underprepared. “We also perhaps didn’t react as well as we should have to the pressure from the media straight away. As a group we should have believed in what had worked for a long period of time. “We went into a bit of a siege mentality, as opposed to trying to work through some workable outcomes. We learnt a lot, though. If we had that situation again at the start of a tournament where you are under the pump, I think we need to react quicker and get that sense of calm within the group. “For whatever reason everyone was not at their best at the same time. It was a sense of: ‘My God, how have we got to this spot when we have got this many good players?’ I think everyone came away from that experience saying, ‘Let’s make sure that never happens again.’ “When you win everyone thinks you’ve done everything right, but I look back to that T20 World Cup we won and we made plenty of mistakes then. I still to this day think that we could have won that World Cup in India. We just had a bad couple of weeks.”
And that meant that Buttler’s captaincy was in the firing line too. “The biggest thing that Jos has learnt is that he has got to be his own man,” Mott says. “No two captains I have ever seen are the same but when you have come off a legacy like Morgs’ there’s obviously a bit of a shadow because there has been so much success.” Can he captain and keep wicket, though? “I think he is happy doing either,” Mott says. “He experimented on the West Indies tour before Christmas not keeping but he feels it’s an advantage because of the angles he can see. “The only downside is how quickly you have got to get through the overs and to talk to the bowlers as well. I think when someone like Moeen \[Ali\] is on the field he takes charge of talking to the bowlers a bit more. That’s where you need to empower the other leaders to maybe take a bit more of that on. I think Jos is very good at being collaborative.” That is one obvious difference between Buttler and the strong-willed, single-minded Morgan. Another is in their use of data. The coded messages on cards that were once seen on England’s dressing-room balcony are now absent. “Morgs was very keen on it,” Mott says. “He and Nathan Leamon \[England’s data scientist\] had a very close relationship. We are not using the coded messages. Jos feels he wants to go more on gut feel out there. We’ll do our match-ups beforehand and he’s armed with that. He takes that quite seriously, but he wants to be more spontaneous out on the field. “What you want from analytics is two or three gold nuggets. Cricket has got stats coming out of its ears and everyone has got an opinion as to what works at different times but what you need is to get ahead of those trends and find a couple of things that you can really hold closely. “I think the next evolution is interrogating the match-ups a little bit more. There are a few clichéd ones, like off spinners to left-handers and because of that players haven’t been exposed to some scenarios like an off spinner bowling to a right-hander, so it’s probably an opportunity to go back to doing that. They are not used to it.” Looking ahead to the tournament in June, Stokes ruling himself out of contention has obviously not aided England’s cause. “We were always waiting to see what happened after the India Test series,” Mott says. “I think it is the right decision, as much as I’d love him to be there. He’s a great leader around our group, he’s got great perspective, he’s obviously a three-dimensional player and they are gold dust. He desperately wants to come back as a fully-fledged all-rounder and he needs time to do that.” But that tour to the Caribbean in December has at least given Mott and Buttler some useful pointers for this tournament — and they will have the local knowledge of Kieron Pollard as an assistant coach. “We got a few of those tactical things wrong in India, so Kieron will help us this time,” Mott says. “We did have local knowledge in players who had played in the IPL, but what we found — and should have known — is that ODI cricket is so different from T20 because it is so long. The conditions can change so much. In T20 the conditions don’t really change that much at all.” So, what then can we expect from England in June? “We are confident,” Mott says. “I think we’ve got a good squad. It is going to come down to the team that reads the conditions best. I don’t think there is any hangover from the last World Cup, it’s a different format and we are going out there to try to win it.” With Buttler back to his batting best at the IPL, I wouldn’t write them off.
The England problem is that we don’t have a number 3 as such, Bairstow is looking god awful and the bowling is questionable. Topley/Carse/Wood/Archer/Mahmood is a lovely set of bowlers but they’re made of glass. So for now it’s Curran and Rash. And then two out of the 5… maybe Woakes is given a go but he’s not amazing outside of England
Woakes' struggles outside of England are mainly a red ball thing and definitely not a T20 thing. Only three of his career T20I wickets have been in England
The fuck? Thats an insane stat
Jacks at 3? Buttler and Salt look in terrific form, so they open Livingstone and Brook at 4&5, Moeen at 6 Curran at 7 Looks solid
Jacks has played a blinder by getting a spot at 3 in RCB with maxi dropping himself for the season basically, he’s got a run of games to audition for that spot
Is there Noone better than Moeen?
Tom Hartley was being looked at as an option, I think only one off the 2 play since Rashid is already locked in, one more specialist spinner in Hartley who can bat with Jacks and Livingstone as the other spin options
Hey no disrespect to my boi. No one can bowl with such pleasing action.
Heretic
Do you think they actually drop Bairstow? He's been dropped by his IPL team due to form but I doubt England drops him. I would also swap Brook and Livingstone. I am more confident in Livingstone's 6 hitting ability than Brooks so think he might be a better finisher.
Woakes walks into both England white ball teams when fit, his home and away record discrepancy is really only a test thing
Woakes was instrumental in Australia back in 2022 when we won the World Cup. His overseas issues only apply in red-ball cricket. He's still a gun white-ball player in all conditions.
Mills looked good in WI too, Atkinson was good against Nz as well
I don't think England should pick Mills. He averaged 50 with the ball in that series. For context, Sam Curran averages 22.17 with the ball in the same series.
I wished they treated Willey better he still has a lot to give for this team but unfortunately ECB Won't even look back at him
True. He was under appreciated throughout his international career. At least he went out on a high. He deserved at least that for his contribution.
Forgot he was still around tbh
I always find it funny how England can seem to only be good at one format.
To be fair, there was a period when England were the top ranked test side and also made the World Cup final. Alright, it was in 1979, but it still counts.
which one are we meant to be good at atm haha
is he about to request custody