LONDON: England coach Brendon McCullum wants to stay in his job despite a chastening Ashes series defeat but admits his future is out of his hands.
England are 3-0 down in the five-match series after just 11 days of cricket, outplayed by a hungry Australian team.
McCullum had branded the tour as “the biggest series of all our lives” but defeats in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide have ended the tourists’ hopes of wresting back the Ashes from their fierce rivals.
Now he and managing director of men’s cricket Rob Key are facing tough questions over their positions after yet another England capitulation in Australia.
McCullum’s predecessor, Chris Silverwood, did not survive a 4-0 defeat four years ago.
The New Zealander has a contract with England until the end of 2027 — a period that includes the next home Ashes, earlier in the same year.
But the 44-year-old said, in comments carried by British media, that his fate would be decided by others.
“I’ll just keep trying to do the job, try to learn the lessons that we haven’t quite got right here and try to make some adjustments,” said McCullum.
“Those questions are for someone else, not for me.
“Sometimes you don’t win, and then those decisions are up to other people. It’s a pretty good gig, it’s good fun. You travel the world with the lads and try to play some exciting cricket and try to achieve some things.”
McCullum said he believed England had improved since he took over in 2022, when he and captain Ben Stokes came together and urged players to play a fearless form of cricket dubbed “Bazball”.
“We’re not the finished article, but I think we’ve definitely improved as a cricket team,” he said. “We’ve had an identity about us.
“You’re always looking at what you’ve got right and what you’ve got wrong, and you’re not too ignorant to admit — or too arrogant either — that you get some things wrong. [It’s OK] as long as you don’t keep making the same mistakes.”
McCullum said England must show their identity in the final two games of the series, in Melbourne and Sydney.
SACKING NO SOLUTION
Meanwhile, former England cricket chief Andrew Strauss has warned that removing McCullum and Stokes will not be enough to change a “depressingly one-sided story” in Australia.
Strauss, 48, was the last England captain to win an away Ashes series. Since then England’s record has been pitiful — they have lost 16 and drawn just two Tests in Australia.
But Strauss, England’s director from 2015 to 2018, has urged those within the game to avoid knee-jerk responses.
In the aftermath of England’s previous defeat in Australia, a 4-0 loss in 2021/22, Strauss led a high-performance review of the domestic game.
His eventual report made numerous suggestions, including cutting the number of first-class matches, restructuring the domestic game and focusing on incentivising elite player development, but they were largely thrown out by the English counties. Although he made no reference to the review in a wide-ranging post on the social network LinkedIn on Monday, Strauss appears to be arguing for a fresh look at such proposals.
“So there it is, another ambitious set of England cricketers made the journey to Australia, full of hope and optimism, only for their dreams to come crashing down around them after only 11 days of cricket,” he wrote.
“McCullum and Stokes will come under extreme scrutiny for the decisions they took in preparation for this tour in the same way that [Ashley] Giles and Silverwood did after the last tour. And Andy Flower after 2013/14 and Duncan Fletcher after 2006/07.”
He added: “While they will know that this goes with the territory, none of the above are responsible for England losing so incredibly consistently in Australia since 1986/87. We have been badly mauled time after time over there because Australia are a better team, served by a better high-performance system.
“If we are genuinely serious about changing this depressingly one-sided story, then we need to look beyond sacking England coaches and captains and ask whether we are genuinely willing to make the changes necessary to break the trend.”
Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2025
