The England test captain Ben Stokes has expressed his excitement saying that the New Zealander’s partnership with captain Jos Buttler in the White-ball format could be beneficial for the team.
ECB has announced McCullum has been named as England’s White ball coach and will combine the roles with his red-ball format from the start of 2025 as a part of a new three-year deal until 2027.
Since assuming the red-ball role in May 2022, McCullum has been successful with the side and has overseen a shift in culture and results. Under his guidance, England has won 19 out of 28 Tests with an adapting ‘bazball’ approach.
That in turn produced six series victories out of nine, with just one defeat, away from India at the start of this year. England’s white-ball setup has struggled in the ODI World Cup 2023 and T20 World Cup 2024 after securing ICC titles in the 2019 ODI World Cup and 2022 T20 World Cup.
The failures have made Matthew Mott has stepped down from the role in July. With Brendon McCullum taking over the head coach position across all formats, England will adapt Bazball for all formats.
While speaking about McCullum’s appointment, Ben Stokes said, “I was very surprised by the news.”
“First and foremost, I think it’s an unbelievable move for English cricket to go back to having a coach in charge of all the teams. You look at what Baz has achieved with the Test side, it’s been amazing.
“I’m really excited for the white-ball team to have the opportunity to be able to work with Baz, listen to him speak, his opinions. How his outlook on life reflects cricket, if that makes sense.
“I think Jos is going to really, really enjoy having him as his coach to work with. And you look at all the new faces who are coming into that white-ball team now, I couldn’t think of a better person for them to come in and work under at the international level for the first time.
“He just gives everyone the platform to go out and enjoy themselves. That doesn’t always necessarily mean it’s going to reflect on your performances, but Baz never puts any added pressure on anybody’s shoulders whatsoever so far.
“If there was any selfishness, selfishness within me, I would be saying ‘no, please don’t’. But I’m an English fan, I’m an England cricket fan and I couldn’t think of a better person to be appointed to be the new coach of the white-ball team as well.”
Stokes admitted making the first test against Pakistan which begins on October 07 and continues to recover from a left hamstring picked up while playing in the Hundred 2024.
Meanwhile, Ollie Pope took over the test captaincy and led the side to victory in the test series against Sri Lanka.
Though making significant progress so far, Stokes and the ECB medical team are not taking anything for granted.
“The recurrence rate of these injuries is 50%, which is quite high,” Stokes explained.
“I’d rather take an extra two weeks than run the risk of potentially doing something worse and then putting myself out of the game for longer. I’m just making sure that I’m doing everything right and everything I possibly can to try and give myself a chance to be fit for that first Test.
“I got told straight away that, within a couple of days, you’ll feel good as gold. That doesn’t mean that it’s healed. So you have to be careful.
“I’ve stayed around the team because I wanted to be here, but as well, so I’m around the medical team every day. Because anything that I can do, even if it gives me a chance of being back three or four days earlier than initially thought, it’s done its job.
“Rehab with hamstrings is incredibly boring, I’ve found out. It’s the first one I’ve done and I can’t really do that much except walk around. I’ve just started doing some double-leg stuff so I can load my left leg now,” concluded Stokes.
England will play their third test against Sri Lanka on September 06 at The Oval.
