Rob Key is into his fourth summer as England’s managing director of men’s cricket but is well aware that his tenure will be judged by the outcome of 10 Test matches that begin this Friday with India before Australia and the Ashes.
It is judgment day for the whole “Bazball” project overseen by Key, head coach Brendon McCullum and Test captain Ben Stokes.
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“There’s no doubt that everyone will define this era on that,” Key tells the new Telegraph Cricket Podcast on its first episode. “I don’t define myself on how we go in the next 10 Test matches, but I’m sure that everyone else will.”
Rob Key was speaking on the new Telegraph Cricket Podcast
After a routine Test win against Zimbabwe, and a positive first outing for Harry Brook’s white-ball teams, the mood in English cricket is largely positive as Key rifles through all manner of issues.
The 46-year-old former Kent captain looks relaxed, dressed for a round of golf (as usual), and is recalling a moment of humorous hypocrisy earlier in the summer, having told his players to dial back on the golf chat that was rubbing fans up the wrong way, only to give an interview from a tee-box at a charity tournament.
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“I didn’t tell them to stop playing golf, just stop giving easy headlines about it and talking about it as I have here,” he laughs. “I was playing the Bob Willis Prostate Cancer Golf Day and they said to me, would you do an interview with Sky News [to promote the day]? And I thought, I’ve just said to them, ‘don’t talk about golf – and here I am on the 10th tee’.
“But I think it’s so important for these lads to have something else outside of the cricket because there’s not a moment I go through where I’m not thinking about the selection side of it, all these different parts of the job. And it’s like you get a moment, whether it’s the cinema, whatever it is you do where you can just switch off and have a bit of peace of mind. I think that’s so important.”
Key knows, though, that the time for talk is done. What matters is how Stokes’s team performs at Headingley on Friday. They start the series with a slightly patched-up attack, but Key hopes that Jofra Archer could be fit for the second Test at Edgbaston and Mark Wood will be back before the series is out.
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Archer and Wood are among a raft of injured England bowlers, and Key admits he watched the World Test Championship final with a little envy given the stark contrast with the durability of Australia’s great bowlers.
They lost that final to South Africa, and a great attack – Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon – are entering the winter of their careers, but they have been together for pretty much every big moment since 2017. Australia have still not lost an Ashes Test that all four have played in.
“I always find it slightly frustrating how they managed to keep those bowlers fit for almost everything,” Key says. “That’s the dream, isn’t it? Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood, with the era that they’ve had, it’s been a lot because of those guys.
“That’s the holy grail, really, being able to keep your best bowlers fit like that for as long as possible.”
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Key believes that a generation of English bowlers like Brydon Carse and Gus Atkinson are maturing, though, and could have similar longevity.
“We’ve looked into all of this, and what happens is there comes a point, with young bowlers where you have to push them, push them, then pull them back.
“They need to develop the robustness, their bones need to strengthen, their bodies need to harden, which is what’s happening now. Cummins had lots of stress fractures and injuries and was out for a long, long time. But there comes a point, they reckon sort of 23 and beyond, where bowlers have properly developed and matured.
“I hate [the idea of] rest and rotation because it’s premeditated, ‘you are not going to play the third Test’ and so on. I don’t like that, but we have to be flexible throughout.”
Key believes a generation of English bowlers including Brydon Carse have the potential to emulate Australia’s great attack – Getty Images/Stu Forster
A crucial member of Key’s team is Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff. The pair were close friends in their playing days and Key ushered Flintoff back to cricket after his horrendous car crash on Top Gear. Now he runs England Lions, nurturing the next generation of players. This is a delicate job, because England are as adventurous with selection as they ever have been.
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Key drops in a host of pretenders’ names, including the Sussex churner Tom Haines, the Surrey seamer Tom Lawes, and Eddie Jack, a Hampshire quick yet to play in the championship. The latter was due to join the Test squad at Headingley this week, but is going to play some county cricket instead.
Crucially, the Lions set-up is an opportunity for Flintoff to prepare himself for the main England side, too.
“I think he’d be an excellent head coach of England, Andrew Flintoff,” Key says. “Fred’s got that real inspiration. He’s been there, he’s done it. He understands what he says.
“He’s more like Brendon McCullum, where he understands what you’re going through. So when you speak to Fred about players, you get a rundown really on not just them as the player, but what they’re really like, what they’re going through, what they think, you know, which is really important.
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“He makes people feel like they can conquer the world really. And he does it in a subtle way. You can’t just tell people ‘you are great’.
“[Our approach is] Pick the most talented players you can and give them experiences.”
England coach Andrew Flintoff with head coach Brendon McCullum – Getty Images/Gareth Copley
Key believes that Flintoff is capable of using the stick as well as the carrot, though.
“It’s no different from raising your kids at times. If you just tell your kids they’re great all the time and give them everything they want… You’ve got some pretty average kids growing up I reckon, and it’s no different as players.
“The last thing you want is entitled cricketers who think that everyone should be doing them a favour. You want to create players that everyone wants to follow, because they’re bloody good players who go out there, win games of cricket, and they’re a great role model.”
Key says Flintoff’s way with players is what makes him a special coach – Getty Images/Shaun Botterill
England’s selection policy – batting Jacob Bethell at No 3 having never scored a professional hundred, for instance – has led to accusations that county form no longer matters.
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But Key believes that county cricket has become so different to Test matches in some respects (the use of spin, for instance), that selection has to take place independent from it. However, he points to the likes of Sam Cook and Ben Duckett, whose county form ultimately brought selection.
“People say but you’re not picking from the counties,” Key says. “I say, where do you think these guys are coming from? They’re not coming from The Dog and Duck, you know, they are being produced by the counties.
“I made a pact to myself. That I could get involved in the county politics, like they’ve got this domestic review. I ended up in the high-performance review we did before [in 2022].
“It’s a hard thing to change, right? It’s just a different style of cricket at the moment because they play so much cricket at the start of the year.”
Key says England proved the critics wrong over Jacob Bethell – Getty Images/Andy Kearns
“So it’s not for me to tell them,” Key adds. “If you’re a director of cricket or you are a county head coach, your job isn’t decided by how England are doing. Your job is on whether you are winning championships. You’ve seen with Lancashire at the moment, Dale Benkenstein, is gone, that’s nothing to do with us. That’s for Lancashire.
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“The same with Jacob Bethell. Everyone was saying how is Jacob Bethell playing for England? Now everyone thinks he should play every game. But we are almost a bit like ‘well yeah, we would’ve been having him bat at three for Warwickshire for years’, but that’s not our place to do that.”
And whether Bethell returns at No 3 in place of Ollie Pope is very much the main topic of conversation heading into the India series. But Key only provides a straight bat to that question, which is not very Bazball at all.
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