Need England test team to rebuild connection with fans, says Brendon McCullum ahead of the India test series.
Brendon McCullum need England Test team to reconnect with fans.
Two weekends ago, before a training camp in Loughborough, the England Test team convened in London to discuss their fans’ perceptions of them.
In the end, the discussion focused on the necessity of being more astute in their media remarks, which Rob Key had made a top priority in March. He mentioned that it did not help that players were “talking a lot of rubbish” while the men’s managing director was sorting through the Champions Trophy rubble.
The final straw seems to be Ben Duckett’s remarks that losing to India in the previous series didn’t matter (it did) as long as England won the tournament (they didn’t).
In place of any international cricket, it and the team’s golf kink have been frequent talking points. And maybe as a result of the conversation, the team itself chose to engage in some deep reflection on the upcoming men’s home summer, which starts with Thursday’s one-off Test match against Zimbabwe and culminates in an important eight months that includes a five-match India series and the winter’s Ashes.
“If we look at it at the start, I think people were excited by the way that we played,” said McCullum, who has noticed a shift from the first two summers on his watch. “They were enthralled by the freewheeling type of cricket that we played, and – I’m guessing here – but I feel as if they felt a sense of belonging to that type of group.
“But if we look at it, some of the ways that we’ve probably let opportunities slip, some of the ways that we’ve maybe not been as smart as what we possibly could with some of our comments in the media and the way that we’ve addressed a couple of those things…
“I think the thing that we want to do is, in our role, you’re not just trying to build cricketers, you’re trying to build men for life too. There is going to be mistakes made, and there’s going to be periods where guys say things that they don’t quite mean and can be misconstrued in a different way. But for us, one of the things that we talk about is we want the English fans to get in behind us.
“It’s a great opportunity. It’s such a big population, a country that loves cricket, and our responsibility is to try and bring those guys along, to try and inspire the next generation of kids to wanna choose cricket over different sports. And to do that, it’s not just about what you do on the cricket field. It’s how you carry yourself.