England have discovered a remarkable new training method: losing quickly, resting thoroughly, and acting like it’s all part of the plan. After being folded inside two days in Perth, the tourists have decided the best way to prepare for a pink-ball Test in Brisbane is to… not prepare for a pink-ball Test in Brisbane.
It is a brave approach – brave in the way walking into a hurricane wearing only a pair of budgie smugglers is brave – but under the Bazball doctrine, bravery is indistinguishable from stubbornness. And right now, Brendon McCullum looks less like a head coach and more like a fringe life coach who somehow scored the contract for the English national cricket team.
The pink ball they dare not name
With England Lions scheduled to play a proper pink-ball, day-night fixture against the Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra – real bowlers, real light towers, actual consequences – England have the perfect chance to restore some cricketing dignity. Instead, they released only three unused players to join the Lions, while the senior group will glide to Brisbane for several days of… contemplation. There’s a growing suspicion they’d rather avoid the optics of another loss – and certainly not one to a second‑string side – than risk a bruising evening under Manuka Oval’s lights.
Michael Vaughan was quick to unleash his “amateurish” taunt, which feels generous compared to what most England fans muttered between hands placed over their eyes at Optus Stadium. His argument was simple: if you’ve just been skittled twice inside 35 overs, perhaps standing under lights against a pink ball is not so much “extra work” as “what a cricket team normally does”.
Alastair Cook, master of understatement, suggested that facing Peter Siddle as a teenager with the ball on a Manuka evening might offer more preparation than another round of indoor nets. Even Atherton – diplomat by nature – drifted close to exasperation.
The cult of personality
But England, we are told, “prepare incredibly well”. Ben Stokes said it with conviction. McCullum said it with the gentle serenity of a man for whom outcomes are a vulgar intrusion upon philosophy. The process is pure, the process is righteous, the process is not to be questioned. If this tour had a playbook it would be laminated, embossed, and probably kept under McCullum’s pillow.
McCullum’s refusal to engage immediately after Perth – “I haven’t even thought about it yet” – sounded less like tactical coyness and more like someone genuinely blindsided that the Test ended before he’d finished his coffee. Eleven days between matches, a format England barely succeed in, a ball type they hardly master, and an opposition led by Mitchell Starc, who treats the pink Kookaburra like a remote-controlled missile… but no, the real priority is “camaraderie”.
There’s team spirit, and then there’s confusing a bonding session for an actual battle plan.
A preparation that wasn’t
England’s build-up to Perth had already become parody: a single warm-up that was more centre-wicket simulation than match, on a surface that bounced like a polite trampoline – nothing at all like the Perth deck that ate a test match in two days.
Now they seem intent on repeating the error in Canberra, as though the humiliation was somehow insufficiently educational. In the time it takes Mitchell Starc to swing one under your bat, England could have played a dozen more overs of pink-ball cricket – but they’ll play none.
Vaughan even imagined players secretly booking their own flights to Canberra if the coaching staff won’t allow it. A scenario in which senior internationals sneak out to play cricket behind their coach’s back feels absurd – but so does the idea that no one in the core squad will get time in the middle before Brisbane.
A nation’s patience, stretched thin
England were 105 runs ahead with nine wickets intact in Perth. They still lost that match inside the same day. In the hours since, Australian pundits have melted from glee into bemusement. English pundits have reached that late-era Ashes stage where every sentence begins with “I’m sorry, but–”.
And yet, through it all, the Bazball party line holds: trust the method. This is starting to feel less like strategy and more like theology. Fans aren’t asking for miracles; they’re asking England to stand under some lights for two evenings and face a pink ball like functioning grown-up cricketers.
The road to Brisbane
There is still time, of course. England could change course, join the Lions, and gather something resembling match readiness. But every signal so far suggests McCullum and Stokes will remain loyal to the doctrine: prepare brilliantly, even if preparation involves very little cricket.
The second Test begins on December 4. England will arrive at the Gabba well-rested, defiantly under-prepared, and full of belief.
Whether belief alone can keep out the pink ball when Starc gets it talking is another matter entirely.
For now, the tourists march on, unshaken by logic, powered by process, and guided by a coach who seems determined to prove that confidence is the new practice. The rest of the cricketing world can only watch and wait, preferably from behind something sturdy.
