Brendon McCullum’s latest absurd claim should spell the end of his tenure

An alarming sign of Brendon McCullum’s attitude to coaching England came on the Adelaide outfield, where, with Australian players uncorking the champagne behind him and the urn surrendered in record-equalling time, he made his soaring pitch to keep his job. “It’s a pretty good gig, it’s good fun,” he shrugged. “You travel the world with the lads and try to play some exciting cricket and achieve some things.”

He sounded as if he were describing life on board a cruise ship, where the pursuit of sporting glory was just some trifling distraction from the boys-on-tour vibe. And in return, he expected to keep a minimum £500,000-a-year ($1 million) salary, with zero accountability.

Any serious organisation would be disabusing him of this delusion today. But the message from the England and Wales Cricket Board is that it is still on board with Baz, that Baz is capable of cultural evolution, that there will simply be a few quiet, behind-the-scenes tweaks before the grand unveiling of Bazball 2.0. Until the past 24 hours, this position might just have been tenable.

Not now, though. Not after the exposure of a culture so dismally amateurish that Harry Brook, the white-ball captain, felt at liberty on the night before a one-day international against New Zealand to go to a nightclub, with that bone-headed decision leading to him being punched by a bouncer.

Could McCullum change his ways on the back of such a revelation? The portents are not good; McCullum, speaking shortly before the Brook news broke but well aware it was coming, said he believes his players “handled themselves pretty well across the board”. It was a final, absurd statement from a tour full of them, and that he felt comfortable saying so beggars belief.

This team is now well aware there are certain moments in the lifespan of England sides when they are defined less by their feats on the field than by their fecklessness off it. It happened in soccer ahead of the 1996 European Championships, where a lairy warm-up trip to Hong Kong was best captured by photographs of Paul Gascoigne on his back in a bar on a so-called “dentist’s chair”, having spirits sluiced down his throat.

It happened in rugby, too, with the misadventure of England’s 2011 World Cup campaign in New Zealand summed up by players’ antics at Altitude bar in Queenstown. Mike Tindall had married into the Royal Family only a couple of months earlier, but he and several others seized on a rare night of mid-tournament freedom by attending an event called the “Mad Midget Weekender”, where revellers could combine drinking with a spot of casual dwarf-tossing.

A similar notoriety now attaches itself to the 2025-26 Ashes tour, otherwise known as “Bazballers Go Large”. Just when you thought they had peaked in Noosa, where Ben Duckett – who seemed not to know where he was or how to get home – was offered an Uber to the nets, along comes Brook to up the ante with the revelation of his wild evening in Wellington. For the ECB, the questions thrown up by these multiple transgressions are serious.

When Rob Key, the director of cricket, conducted his media briefings in Melbourne last month, he said, in reference to a video of players drinking on the night when Brook later had his altercation with a security heavy: “There wasn’t any action, like formal action. I didn’t feel like that was worthy of formal warnings. But it was probably worthy of informal ones.”

And yet there had been formal action. Brook, in the wake of his actions on the very evening Key was addressing, was fined around £30,000 ($60,000) by the ECB, the maximum amount possible. So why did Key not disclose this? Why was there apparent omerta over the incident for more than two months?

There has been an incredulous reaction here in Australia, with one report turning the heat on “senior English officials who approved the cover-up”. It highlights the degree of discomfort for the governing body, with the problems exposed by the Brook story not just cultural but institutional.

The fiasco is embodied most vividly by McCullum. It is not simply that the 44-year-old New Zealander has presided over a shambles of a tour, but that his reaction to losing the Ashes 4-1 is one of casual, “It’ll be right, mate” insouciance. He was adamant in the aftermath of defeat in Sydney that he was “not for being told what to do” and snapped at a perfectly reasonable question about whether he could change his ways.

His demeanour during matches, chewing gum and draping his feet over the balcony railing, has become symbolic of the loucheness of the enterprise. Somebody should have offered to sponsor the soles of his shoes, as this is about the only angle from which viewers ever see him.

Except the power base he has built is precarious. It was striking how Ben Stokes seemed to put distance between himself and the deluded head coach by emphasising the “damage we did to ourselves” and his regrets about “adding to our own downfall”.

The Bazball Kool-Aid is now an unpalatable potion, with the necessity for change self-evident. We are not in the 1980s any longer, when drinking scrapes were an accepted part of tour tapestry. This is an era where the best teams throw everything possible at winning, from data analysts to watt bikes to cryotherapy chambers. The fact that McCullum neglected even the absolute basics, failing to appoint a fielding coach or to schedule proper dry runs of the conditions England would face in Australia, is unforgivable.

There is no shortage of candidates who could replace him. Justin Langer appears desperate for the job, lavishing such praise on Jacob Bethell – “dare I say it, I love him” – that he would clearly jump at the chance to coach England’s latest centurion. A more radical option would be to break the bank for Ricky Ponting, should he be open to the opportunity, with his piercing insight into England’s failings a highlight of Ashes commentary.

Whoever emerges as the frontrunner, it is painfully obvious that the incumbent cannot remain, with McCullum already talking about his resistance to change. If he refuses to change, then it is the man himself who must be changed.

Telegraph, London