EXCLUSIVE: Rob Key says Australian may play for England within the Ashes

Rob Key allows himself a smile as he reflects on a lively couple of weeks. First England’s Test team blew their chance of a first perfect summer for 20 years with a sloppy performance against Sri Lanka at The Oval. Now the white-ball reset has made a mixed start against Australia.

To complicate matters, the stand-in 50-over captain Harry Brook reacted to his team’s collapse in the first ODI at Trent Bridge last week by saying: ‘If you get caught somewhere on the boundary or in the field then who cares?’

The point he wanted to make was that one type of dismissal is no worse than another. But it was the last two words of his rhetorical question that poked the hornet’s nest – and Brook was still explaining himself even after his unbeaten century helped England pull one back in Chester-le-Street on Tuesday.

Who cares? Well, fans forking out £100 to watch England, for starters…

But Key, ECB’s managing director of men’s cricket for the last two and a half years, is used to the occasional depiction of England as feckless and reckless. And he is used to the notion that every Test feels like a referendum on Bazball.

‘I don’t get too concerned about what our lads say,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘I don’t hold it against them. I always find it amazing the perception people have – and they will say it comes from us – that our players don’t want to improve.

‘There was a podcast that Zak Crawley did with Nasser [Hussain], and he was talking about all the things he’s been working on, and at the end Nasser said: “It’s really good to hear he wants to improve his game.” And I was like: “Really? Do you think any of these lads don’t want to improve every day?”’

Hussain’s point was that Crawley gets pigeon-holed as a ‘that’s the way I play’ kind of batsman, so it was nice to hear how hard he works.

But it was a reminder that, ever since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes decided to do things differently in 2022, England’s Test team have – one way or another – got people talking.

It hasn’t been enough for some that they have turned one win out of 17 into 19 wins out of 29, or scored at more than 4.5 an over, or unearthed Jamie Smith, Gus Atkinson and Shoaib Bashir.

Critics linger instead on the missteps, and the perception – erroneous, Key argues – that the players are more concerned with entertainment than victory.

‘They didn’t take their foot off the gas at The Oval,’ he says. ‘Sri Lanka just played bloody well. I don’t think we took the opposition as lightly as people watching did. Whenever we won this summer, it was like: the opposition’s rubbish. But we didn’t disrespect them.’

As for the idea that England place too small a price on their wickets, Key has heard that one too.

‘Every time someone gets out, you can say: “Don’t do that.” And before you know it, they’ve lost the hook shot, they’ve lost the cut shot and they’re not actually scoring any runs.

‘You have to trust that highly skilled cricketers will make the right decision more often than not. When someone gets out on 95, you don’t have to say: “Don’t do that again.” They know that. They’re not idiots.

‘These players are beating themselves up far too often as it is. We’re far too quick in English cricket to think less of ourselves, to think we can’t play like so and so. What we’re trying to do, Brendon would say, is make them feel 10 foot tall and bulletproof.

‘In the Ashes last year, there was stuff about us just wanting to entertain. No: everything is a process to winning. That’s what we’re here for. How do we get them into a position to win? Now that’s the real magic to leadership.’

Talk of the urn throws up the tantalising possibility that England’s attack down under in 2025-26 could include a bowler who has already represented Australia but qualifies for his adopted country in April. The Melbourne-born Dan Worrall appeared in three ODIs in 2016, but – using his British passport – has been representing Surrey as a local player for the last three summers.

In that time, his 139 wickets at just 21 apiece have been central to the club’s hat-trick of championship titles, and Key insisted Worrall’s roots would not count against him. Still, you have to go back to Albert Trott in the 19th century to find a cricketer who represented both Australia and England.

‘Worrall looks like someone who is completely in control of his game, and is probably one of the best bowlers in the country playing domestic cricket,’ says Key. ‘He probably could make the jump to Test level. He’s got brilliant attributes to be an international bowler.’

How Worrall, 34 next year, fits in is another matter. Key’s desire to build an attack capable of taking 20 wickets in all conditions has placed an onus on speed, and he believes there is room in the post-Anderson-and-Broad era for only one seamer slower than 84mph. Worrall is a touch quicker, though not up there with Mark Wood, Jofra Archer, Olly Stone or Josh Tongue.

And, as if aware of the new rule of thumb, Matthew Potts said on Thursday he was ‘trying to keep my average up at 84-85’, having added a couple of mph this summer.

‘I think Worrall can fit into that category of “85mph and highly skilled,”’ says Key. ‘It seems like a good option.’

That four-man list, though, is a reminder that England’s fastest bowlers have an erratic fitness record, whereas Australia’s three big quicks – Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood – tend to be available for the games that matter.

Key says a ‘big project’ is underway to enhance English fast bowling, and argues that decisions are being made about young quicks before their bodies have matured – around the age of 23.

He offers an old-fashioned solution. ‘If you look at the Australians, they have their fair share of injuries,’ he says. ‘But, like us, the ones that get injured the least are the ones who play the most. The bottom line is, they need to bowl. Your body needs to get robust for the skill you’re doing.’

The exception, he says, is Archer, whose recovery from complex elbow surgery is being carefully managed to give him a chance of playing in next summer’s Test series against India. As Key puts it: ‘Jofra could be one of the greatest bowlers we’ve ever had, and it would be such a shame if we didn’t see him playing Test cricket again.’

The fast-bowling project is typical Key, whose optimism and curiosity are a welcome change from the conservatism that has often blighted the game.

Not all his decisions have been universally popular. Some argue that the new multi-year central-contracts system has rewarded those with no international future, though Key stresses the importance of maintaining control over players at a time when the T20 franchise circuit offers other rewards.

What is not in doubt is his desire to improve English cricket’s lot, and that includes a coaching system he believes places too many barriers to entry, and emphasises theory over practice.

The elevation of his old mate Andrew Flintoff to head coach of England Lions, despite a lack of formal qualifications, feels like a point emphatically made. But, to a backdrop of off-the-record mutterings from career coaches who feel Flintoff jumped the queue, Key defends the choice.

‘We had a blind application process, so you can’t see who it is,’ he says. ‘If he wasn’t top of that process, he wouldn’t have got the job. The HR department and Ed Barney [the new men’s performance director] thought the same.

‘Fred will have a team around him who complement his skills. He’s that bit of magic you hope will inspire people. These young players will have watched him playing when they were growing up. Now they’ve got the opportunity to learn off Andrew Flintoff.

‘He’s someone who, like Stokes, has won Ashes series. He’s seen the absolute highs of international cricket and the lows. Like Stokes, he’s bright enough to recognise that and when others are going through it.

‘He is by far the best candidate for the job. English cricket’s incredibly lucky Andrew Flintoff wants to do it.’

It’s a very Key kind of call, seeing the upside, not the threat. Like England’s batsmen, he doesn’t intend to die wondering.