Brendon McCullum wants England to relax and shed their fear of failure
Brendon McCullum has described England’s Test team as being full of “guys who are maybe just a little bit stuck by the fear of failure rather than the possibility of success”, a fear to which the side’s new coach feels the English are particularly prone.
“My first job is to try to strip away some of the stuff that doesn’t really matter but can affect you as a person and keep things as relaxed as possible,” he said. “If we can do that, talent can come to the fore.”
At a sun-kissed Lord’s on Friday , the day after England’s new red-ball coach arrived in the country following the completion of his duties in the Indian Premier League and six days before his first Test in charge starts at the same venue against New Zealand, McCullum explained the impact he hopes to have on the mentality of his new charges.
“Everyone’s got a fear of failure to a degree, but it’s probably just a little more English than others,” he said. “That’s one of the beauties of it because that’s where a lot of my skills are, taking a lot of those pressures off people. It’s not going to be easy, I understand that, and there’ll be some guys that get there quicker than others. But when you do get to that state where you’re playing the game for the game’s sake, because you enjoy it and you’re invested in it, you immerse yourself in that moment and it’s a great game to play. It’s not a great game when you’re worried about all the other stuff which goes on.”
McCullum joins a side at a low ebb having won just one of its last 17 matches, encouraged by the fact that some of England’s greatest cricketing successes in recent years – such as reaching the top of the Test rankings under Andy Flower, or winning the 50over World Cup under Trevor Bayliss – have come while the side was overseen by foreign coaches.
The 40-year-old has talked at length to both Flower, the Zimbabwean who coached England between 2009 and 2014, and Bayliss, the Australian who took charge between 2015 and 2019, about the task that lies ahead of him.
“It’s funny how that’s worked out. I’ve spoken to them in a little bit of depth about the challenge, and both were pretty similar in their views that you’ve just got to try and take pressure away from the guys,” he said. “Maybe that’s the thing with being overseas, you can maybe identify that and go about trying to bring that simplified method in, rather than maybe if you are English. I don’t know, maybe it’s a coincidence, but we’ll find out. I might be terrible! I might change it all completely.”
The Kiwi admits he is not a technical coach, but he will delay bringing in additional expertise until he has evaluated England’s current staff, which includes spin bowling coach Jeetan Patel, pace bowling coach Jon Lewis, batting coach Marcus Trescothick, and Paul Collingwood, who acted as interim head coach between the departure of Chris Silverwood in January and McCullum’s appointment this month.
“You want to get in and find out what you’ve got,” he said. “There’s some good people involved in the setup at the moment and I want to find out where the real diamonds are. There