2 1GS Saturday May 28 2022 | the times
WEEKEND
BRIEFING
Ones to watch
Leinster can win a fifth
Heineken Champions
Cup title by beating Ronan
O’Gara’s La Rochelle in the
European final in Marseille.
The French side were
runners-up last year.
4.45pm, BT Sport 2Liverpool seek revenge
for their 3-1 defeat by
Real Madrid in 2018 in the
Champions League final in
Paris. Victory will seal a cup
treble for Jürgen Klopp’s side
this season.
8pm, BT Sport 1, YouTubeGuess the star
Name this tennis player,
ranked in the top ten in the
world, practising for the
French Open at Roland
Garros.
Answer on page 6Street racers
Formula One returns to the
streets of Monaco, where
Mercedes will be seeking to
improve again. At such a
tight track, qualifying today
will likely be vital in
determining the race winner.
Page 5Literary v Giants
Wigan’s poetry-loving English
literature graduate head
coach is looking to make a
name for himself against
Huddersfield Giants with a
victory that he hopes can
help usher in a new era of
Challenge Cup dominance.
Page 10On the box
TODAY
10.30am French Open,
Roland Garros
Eurosport
2.15pm Leicestershire v
Derbyshire, T20 Blast
Sky Sports Cricket
3.30pm John of Gaunt
Stakes, Haydock
ITV
TOMORROW
3.30pm Gujarat Titans v
Rajasthan Royals, IPL final
Sky Sports Cricket
4pm Huddersfield v N Forest,
Championship play-off final
Sky Sports Main Event
5pm Charles Schwab
Challenge, PGA Tour
Sky Sports Golf,Among the various pieces of art work
on Brendon McCullum’s body are the
Roman numerals CXXVI and CCXXIV
symbolising his cap numbers as a one-
day and Test cricketer for New Zealand.
The country’s symbol, the silver fern, is
tattooed across his chest. This is a man
for whom the pride of playing for his
country was visceral and visible.
That McCullum’s first assignment as
England’s Test head coach is against his
old team, upon whom he had such a
transformational impact, is one of the
many intriguing storylines as the inter-
national season approaches. It will
surely feel a little odd for him sitting on
the home balcony next week in a pale
blue tracksuit with the three lions on his
chest, peering across to his old mates in
the New Zealand dressing room.
It was a pale blue tracksuit, with the
three lions, that he was sporting on
Friday as he faced the media for the first
time since his appointment. He’d flown
home to New Zealand briefly, after his
stint in the Indian Premier League, and
then to London, where he has bunked
down with his great friend Eoin
Morgan for a few days prior to the Test
series beginning.
This whirlwind trip across continents
is typical of the life of the modern
coach, for whom national boundaries
are, if not meaningless, then porous.
Trevor Bayliss, Ottis Gibson and Mick-
ey Arthur are all recent examples who
have coached against their national
teams, as Chris Silverwood may do
soon enough with Sri Lanka. Neverthe-
less, it is unusual for a coach to find
himself pitting his wits so soon against
players with whom he shared such a
close bond, as McCullum did with the
likes of Tim Southee, Trent Boult and
Kane Williamson.
To many of them, McCullum was a
captain, mentor and friend and so it was
a line of questioning he must have been
anticipating. Sensibly, he did not play
down these links. “I am a very staunch
Kiwi. I’m very proud of my heritage,
very proud of my upbringing and what
I’ve been able to achieve for my coun-
try. I’ve invested a lot of my life in trying
to perform for New Zealand and I feel I
left the camp in a better position than I
took it over,” he said.
“I’m very proud of that, and I’ll con-
tinue to look out for a lot of those guys
that I’ve had time with and have shared
experiences with, but this is a job where
you’re being tasked with trying to bring
about change and trying to hopefully
do something which lasts a long period
of time into the future, and that’s a
pretty enticing opportunity. It’ll be
difficult, no doubt, looking across the
New Zealand balcony at times, but
that’s just life.”
It was a sensible response given that
English cricket has long lost any sense
of disquiet over the nationality of its
coaches. There is residual gratitude for
the success of those from overseas who
have outshone the home grown —
Duncan Fletcher, first of all, who
helped to drag England out of the
doldrums; then Andy Flower, who took
the team to the summit in Test and one-
day cricket and Bayliss, less transfor-
mational, but still a World Cup winning
coach. The achievements of home-
grown coaches cannot compare.
But for McCullum, his nationality
presents an interesting conundrum ifCONTINUED FROM FRONT
man-management, providing the right
environment to make the guys the best
versions of themselves.
“I think with Stokesy [Ben Stokes] as
captain we’ve got a really strong leader,
a ‘follow me’ type of captain and so I
think my job will be to try to ensure that
we’re consistent with a lot of our
messaging. I’ll look after the guys inside
the environment as well and try to
allow them to really grow at a speed
which they might not have got to previ-
ously, so it’s a big challenge.”
McCullum, who had initially been
touted as a candidate for the Englandlimited-overs coaching job — since
filled by the Australian Matthew Mott
— said his lack of experience coaching
in the longer format need not be a
drawback. His first series is against New
Zealand, which starts at Lord’s on
Thursday.
“I’m confident in the skills that I’ve
got and I’m confident in the group that
we have to start things off as well,” he
said.
The 13-man England squad for the
first Test was picked by McCullum,
Stokes and Rob Key, the managing
director of England men’s cricket
who appointed the New Zealander.
McCullum said that he had left most of
the selections to Key and Stokes butMcCullum mission: help
Mike
Atherton
Chief Cricket
Correspondentonly because the essence of his trans-
formation of the New Zealand team
was based on a concerted effort to tap
into a sense of belonging, heritage and
nationhood. He said of the team he
inherited that it had no “soul” and his
leadership was about trying to find a
style of play and set of behaviours for
his players that was authentic to who
they were as a people. That is harder to
do as an outsider.
But all coaches need a big idea at the
start, a clarion call to those who must
follow, and preferably one with more
meaning and purpose than “batting
long and bowling dry”.
“A team has to bind around a larger
sense of purpose,” he wrote in his auto-
biography, and an early sense of McCu-
llum’s big idea with England is around
the vitality of Test cricket itself.
He comes to an ailing team, who have
one win in 17 Tests and are currently
bottom of the World Test Champion-
ship, in an ailing format. He sees the
health of the England team and the
health of Test cricket more generally as
inextricably linked. Helping to improve
one will help to revitalise the other, he
thinks. It is an idea that cricket
followers in this country will certainly
rally behind.
“If you look at Test cricket, we’re
probably all honest enough to say that
it is not maybe as popular as what it
once was. T20 cricket and franchise
cricket has given me a great life and I’ve
earned a good living out of it and I’m
forever grateful for that, but Test
cricket for me was always the pinnacle
of the sport.
“Wouldn’t it be great if in a couple of
years’ time, if we got this thing right,
then the next wave of youngsters
coming through want to play Test
cricket as the No 1 priority? Not just
because the game is appealing but the
personalities that are involved are good
role models and it looks like a fun game
to play.
“If Test cricket is going to survive and
thrive then England has to be at the top
of the tree.
“If the Ashes isn’t competitive or if
England aren’t vying for No 1 positions,
then Test cricket is in trouble because of
the support that the people of England
and the UK have for Test cricket. No
one else really has the same affection or
has the ability to make the [five-day]
game sustainable.”
It may be, McCullum admitted, “a
fanciful idea,” but it is the kind of fanci-
ful idea that can encourage a man to
change his life completely and commit
to something for the long term — and
the kind of fanciful idea that may
inspire a generation of cricketers too, in
the same way that Morgan’s team have
done in one-day cricket. Tying his own
ambitions, to emulate with England
what he did with New Zealand, to
something grander and more meaning-
ful will play well with his new audience.
It is a smart pitch.
Referencing the notoriously appall-
ing weather in his home town of
Dunedin, McCullum once said that
an upbringing as a cricketer there
demanded a sense of optimism. That
may also be said of taking on the twin
challenge of England’s ailing Test team
and Test cricket more generally right
now. McCullum has bucked the trend,
opting for country over franchise and
Test over T20, and it is a worthy task he
has set himself.
“If you are going to change your
entire life for something, it has got to be
a pretty big challenge. Opportunities
like this don’t come around too often,
hence why I was prepared to change my
life for it and take on the job,” he said.
Good on him.NEW COACH ON
THE BIG ISSUES
“Ollie Pope at three, for
instance — yes there’s risk
with it, but everyone
that’s been around
English cricket, all the
guys in the side talk
about how good a player
this guy is, and what his
potential is. Let’s see it —
give him the opportunity
in a position which has
been difficult. If he’s able
to nail it, then your
middle order looks very,
very good.”POPE AT NO 3