After yet another heartbreaking Ashes loss, former England cricket head Andrew Strauss has cautioned that dismissing captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum will not be sufficient to alter a “depressingly one-sided story” in Australia.
The last England captain to win an Ashes series away from home was Strauss, 48, whose team won 3-1 in 2010–11. Since then, England’s record in Test matches in Australia has been appalling, with just two draws and 16 losses.
With two games remaining in the series, McCullum and Stokes are under pressure after the visitors fell behind 0-3 on Sunday. However, Strauss, who served as England’s director of cricket from 2015 to 2018, has advised players to refrain from making snap judgments.
Following England’s 0-4 loss in Australia in 2021–2022, Strauss oversaw a high-performance evaluation of the domestic game.
The English counties mostly rejected the many recommendations in his final report, which included reducing the amount of first-class games, reorganizing the domestic game, and emphasizing the development of great players.
In a comprehensive article on the social network LinkedIn on Monday, Strauss seemed to be advocating for a new examination of such suggestions, despite not mentioning the review.
“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 (Chris) 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.”
