England captain Ben Stokes has dismissed suggestions of a collapse in his relationship with coach Brendon McCullum, although not everyone is convinced that is the case.
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Stokes and McCullum, a former New Zealand captain, have been in a close alliance since joining forces in 2022.
But there appeared to be a difference in their respective approaches as England slumped to a woeful 4-1 series Ashes loss in Australia.
As all-rounder Stokes opted for a more grinding, disciplined approach, as the series wore on, while McCullum continued to stand by his mantra of ultra-aggressive ‘Bazball’ cricket.
Both men backed each other in public at the end of the series and Stokes reiterated that position following media reports a post-Ashes review had revealed tensions between the duo.
“Saying we weren’t aligned, I think, is a massive overstatement,” Stokes said in an in-house interview with the England and Wales Cricket Board published Tuesday.
“When you’re in a position of leadership along with someone else, if anyone thinks that you’re always going to agree on everything, then it’s just impossible.”
While the interview was intended to refute the idea of a rift with his coach, The Telegraph UK’s chief cricket correspondent Nick Hoult wrote that “evidence of the Ashes suggests otherwise”.
To prove his point, Hoult pointed towards Stokes’ own tour report, which was written and submitted to the ECB and was said to be critical of the management of the tour and tactical decisions.
“It is not too hard to make the link with McCullum,” he added.
Hoult went on to write that the latest video does “little to change that perception” and that if anything, “they protest a little too much about the captain-coach relationship”.
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Hoult wasn’t the only one that felt that way, with Daily Mail cricket correspondent Lawrence Booth writing in his column that England is “fighting fires even before the international summer has begun”.
“Like the dreaded vote of confidence from the football chairman, Stokes’s insistence that he and McCullum can rub along for the benefit of English cricket instinctively raises the question of what will happen if they can’t,” he added.
Booth went on to question the peculiar timing of the ECB video release, noting it came after the latest edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack was published this week.
In it, Booth wrote that “while Stokes began to resemble Frodo Baggins en route to Mount Doom, McCullum was Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road, insistent good things lay ahead. The messaging was mixed, the upshot inevitable”.
To further underline his point, he also singled out McCullum and Stokes’ mixed messaging midway through the Ashes series.
“Until the end of the second Test at Brisbane, they had sung to an almost uncanny degree from the same hymnsheet,” he wrote.
“But the notes of discord were unmistakeable. While Stokes warned after England’s eight-wicket defeat at the Gabba that Australia was ‘not for weak men’, McCullum used his pre-match press conference in Adelaide to urge his team on.
“Stokes wanted to knuckle down, and batted accordingly. McCullum did not want to change tack in the middle of the most important series of the Bazball era.”
Stokes did concede there would be a change in how he worked with McCullum as the team look to return to winning ways ahead of the 2027 Ashes in England.
“I’m very confident in mine and Brendon’s ability to be able to work together, because we’ve done it for such a long period of time now, but work together in a slightly different way,” he said.
“The main point of me and Brendon is our alignment towards winning things and making this team as good as they can be. That’s always been the thing since we started. It might just look a little bit different now to how that operates — on the back of four years working together.
“Hopefully we’ll still be together at the end of 2027, winning what we want to win.” Stokes is currently recovering from a facial injury after being struck by a stray ball in pre-season training but is expected to lead England in the first Test against New Zealand at Lord’s on June 4.
But Brydon Carse could miss that match after withdrawing Tuesday from the Indian Premier League because of an injury to his right hand.
Carse, 30, was the only ever-present England quick bowler during the Ashes. But he was struck on his bowling hand while batting in the nets for Sunrisers Hyderabad before this year’s edition of the IPL got underway.
England are back in Test action in June, against New Zealand, before taking on Pakistan at home as well.
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