McCullum combined the Test and white-ball roles in 2024, two years after he first took charge of the Test team. When he arrived as Test coach in 2022, he initially embarked on a spell of superb results earned with some breathtaking cricket.
The partnership with Stokes – the Bazball style – revitalised an England team that had won only one of its previous 17 Tests.
With some swashbuckling batting, England earned famous wins over New Zealand at Trent Bridge, India at Edgbaston and Pakistan in Rawalpindi, the latter the beginning of a 3-0 series win. Overall, England won 10 of their first 11 Tests under McCullum and Stokes.
However, since that initial period of success, England have lost 19 and won 17 of 38 Tests, beginning with a heart-stopping one-run defeat by New Zealand in Wellington, sustained after England enforced the follow-on.
England fell 2-0 down in the home Ashes of 2023, yet turned it around to draw 2-2 and perhaps would have won the urn had rain not washed out almost the entire last two days of the fourth Test at Old Trafford.
The tour of India in 2024 began with another famous win in Hyderabad, only to decline into a 4-1 series defeat.
On returning home from India, Stokes, McCullum and Key set their sights on the Ashes tour of 2025-26, including ending the career of England’s all-time leading wicket-taker James Anderson.
England formed a plan to hit Australia with pace and assembled arguably their most hostile attack in more than 50 years for the trip down under.
But the tour fell apart in a blur of inadequate planning, poor performances and allegations of a drinking culture.
After playing only one warm-up match against the Lions, England were in a strong position in the first Test in Perth – 105 runs ahead with nine wickets in hand shortly after lunch on the second day. In an astonishing implosion, England were beaten before the day was out and never recovered.
Although England won the fourth Test in Melbourne, their first win in Australia for 14 years, their performances elsewhere were abject – a threadbare squad left ill-prepared for the demands of a tour down under.
Off the field, England’s reputation by their public drinking in Noosa, when opener Ben Duckett was filmed, apparently drunk.
Worse was to come at the end of the Ashes tour, when it emerged Brook had been struck by a nightclub bouncer in Wellington on the eve of a one-day international on the tour of New Zealand that preceded the trip to Australia.
After they were backed to remain in their jobs, McCullum and Stokes attempted to distance themselves from rumours of a rift that had supposedly developed in Australia.
England added to their backroom staff to aid preparation and implemented a midnight curfew in an attempt to avoid further controversy.
There was optimism when they won the first Test of the home summer against New Zealand at Lord’s, however the nightclub incident that unfolded when Stokes was celebrating that win sparked the chain of events that has left England in turmoil.
McCullum’s contract with the white-ball team runs to the end of the 50-over World Cup in southern Africa next autumn.
Now, England must find a head coach of the Test team who can work alongside McCullum’s big character and relaxed approach.
