Stokes holds key to coach’s future

Brendon Mccullum touched on how, as Test coach, he would have to “push” Ben Stokes, or at times “pull him back”, and it is the latter of the two that will have the most bearing on England’s success over the next four years.

Stokes is an all-or-nothing character but, as captain, he cannot carry the fight alone and England have average players battling to stay above the surface in Test cricket.

For Stokes, it will be about knowing when to seize the moment rather than being all-out offensive, otherwise his battery will run low quickly, and he is approaching the one-year anniversary of when he was forced to take a prolonged break partly due to burnout.

On the field, the concern is that

Stokes will take on too much – bowl long spells of short balls as an enforcer or throw himself into fitness training – and just try to lead from the front at all times.

It will take a strong character to tell him when to “pull back”, and given the inexperience of the England side, that will fall largely to Mccullum.

Hearing him speak, it could have been Stokes sitting in the England and Wales Cricket Board boardroom. They have so much in common. Unusually, England have a captain-coach combination of two men on an equal footing.

Normally the captain is dominant. This time, both are starting out as leaders in red-ball cricket – Stokes is preparing for his first series as official captain, Mccullum has never coached a red-ball team.

But it is not a standing start for Mccullum. He played cricket Stokes’s way and already has his respect, which will help when he needs to rein him in.

“I think the captain-coach relationship is vital. It needs to be a really tight bond there,” Mccullum said. “You don’t have to be the best of mates but I think you have to have a real clear vision of where you want to go and you both have to align with that. If you have that then you can fill the gaps.

“My job as coach is to fill in the gaps for Stokesy because I want him to be the most authentic person he can be, lead the way he wants to be. There may be times I have to pull him back and times when I might have to push him forward.

“My job is to make sure anything that gets missed is taken care of and also to make sure we stay on task with what our overall vision is as well. That can be difficult in itself but to me that’s how the captaincoach relationship works and how it worked with Mike Hesson [former New Zealand coach] and myself.

“I was probably a little more cavalier and he was a little more structured and planned. You just make sure as a coach – and I’m not the most structured of people – you put some people around you who have that structure and who can fill those voids.”

With that in mind, appointments to his backroom staff, coaches who