Shock county cricket claim that left England great ‘pissed off’; Stokes’ warning on big call — Ashes Daily

Former England Test captain Michael Vaughan has revealed his frustration at a Darren Lehmann interview in which the ex-Australian head coach claimed he had “never” spoken to or seen a selector at county cricket.

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Lehmann made headlines late last month when he made the comments on BBC’s Test Match Special, with the now Northamptonshire coach shining a light on why England’s problems at the Test level may go deeper than the current squad.

Lehmann was not the only cricket figure to put the spotlight on England’s county cricket system either, with former England captain Alastair Cook also claiming it has been ignored for far too long.

“If you’re banging out runs or wickets in county cricket, there must be a path into the Test team, and I think at the minute, there isn’t. That needs to be looked at,” Cook said on TNT Sports on Boxing Day.

Vaughan, however, took particular note of Lehmann’s comments.

“I heard Darren Lehmann give an interview… it actually pissed me off,” Vaughan said on the Stick To Cricket podcast

“He’s a county coach. He’s the coach of Northampton. So, Darren Lehmman, not only is he an ex-Australian Test cricketer, a wonderful player who knows these conditions better than anybody, but he’s coaching within our system.

“So, he’s got players that are surely on England’s radar, maybe one or two, there won’t be many at Northampton, no disrespect… (but) this England management hasn’t even thought to (say) ‘Boof, can we have a lunch with you and pick your brain’ not just over the county game and players but what is Australia like these days?”

Vaughan went on to claim that in his eight years working for Fox Cricket’s broadcast coverage of both Test series and the Big Bash League, he has not had a single conversation with England selectors either.

“I think it’s very important when you’re in a leadership role that you get information and use that information how you want,” he added.

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STOKES’ WARNING ON BIG ENGLAND COACHING CALL

Captain Ben Stokes on Saturday called the fifth and final Test against Australia a “huge game” for England and threw his support behind under-fire coach Brendon McCullum, vowing there would be no coasting at the end of a long and draining Ashes tour.

The tourists go into the clash on Sunday at the Sydney Cricket Ground buoyed by a four-wicket win inside two days at the previous Test in Melbourne.

It snapped a 15-year winless streak in Australia but came too late to save the series with the hosts retaining the urn by winning in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Stokes said it was important to keep the momentum going.

“This is a big game, purely because we’re walking out there representing England,” he said.

“The Ashes, unfortunately for us, hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to, but we’ve got one more game in a big series.

“And it’s a real big one for us. So although we can’t get the thing that we came here for, we’ve still got a chance to go there and win a game of cricket.” Stokes, whose side has been hounded by the media in Australia and come under enormous pressure back home, added that there was no room for complacency and it had been made clear to the players.

“I don’t think it will happen, just sort of coasting through this game and seeing what happens,” he said.

“This is a huge game for us… it’s going to take all 11 of us to go out there and get on the right side of the result like we managed to do last week.

“So although we get to go home on eight or nine days’ time, any thought of that can wait till then. It’s about what we do over the next five days, that’s the most important thing.”

While there have been suggestions England’s poor Ashes series could cost McCullum his job, Stokes warned against such a move.

“Ashes tours in the past haven’t gone well, but if you do what we did four years ago, we’ll just end up back in the same situation,” Stokes said.

“I can’t see there being someone else who I could take this team (with) from where we are now to even bigger heights.

“We’ve put so much time and effort into getting this team to where it was from when we first started. And now we’re in a sort of situational position where we know we want to get even more out of the group; to get even more out of individuals.

“Being perfectly honest, you look back at how things have gone over the last, let’s say, year; the results and the consistency hasn’t quite been there from the first two and a half to three years that we were in charge.

“When you start seeing a trend and something that’s not what you want, then when you have that time off in between series like we do after this in January and I think June, is it? Yeah, it’s a long time for us to get things going again in the right direction.

“There is no doubt in my mind that me and Brendon are the right people to carry on doing this for the near future.”

England named a 12-man squad on Friday with seamer Matthew Potts and spinner Shoaib Bashir included.

Potts is the only unused fast bowler from their original 16-man squad and is set to play after Gus Atkinson limped off with a hamstring issue in Melbourne.

Bashir and Will Jacks are expected to vie for the final spot. Australia captain Steve Smith on Saturday said a final look at the wicket was needed before the hosts decided on their starting XI.

Stokes said England also needed more time, but admitted no one really knew how the wicket would play despite captains and coaches pretending they did.

“I mean, we try and act like we know what we’re doing when we’re looking down at the pitch and rubbing it and knocking it — no one really has a clue to be honest,” he said.

“You can only just try and give yourself the best chance of thinking: right, what 11 do we need to give us a chance of winning this?”