Former England players criticise Ben Stokes’ captaincy and Bazball ‘cult’ after Ashes thrashing by Australia

Former England players have offered damning assessments of the team’s 4-1 Ashes defeat in Australia.

Ben Stokes’ side won a chaotic two-day match in Melbourne but were otherwise outplayed across all disciplines of the game by a depleted Australian side who missed captain Pat Cummins and spinner Nathan Lyon for much of the contest, and were without key bowler Josh Hazlewood for the entire series.

Stokes’ captaincy has come under scrutiny for the first time since he took charge, as has the role of head coach Brendon McCullum and the ECB director who appointed them, Rob Key.

Former England captain Michael Vaughan called on the Bazball “cult” to learn and adapt if the trio are to remain in place and succeed in the future.

“They have to change the culture around the group,” Vaughan said on Fox Sports. “They seem to have created a cult around the way this team play and talk. A lot of it is nonsense and that has to change.

“For English cricket to get back to winning Test series and five-match series, you have to remember they haven’t won a five-match series since 2017 … they’ve had some flamboyant times and exciting times in recent years, but they haven’t won a big, big series – and that’s what English cricket has been known for, for 20-odd years.”

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Jonathan Agnew was critical of Stokes’ captaincy, telling BBC Sport: “When England won in Pakistan three years ago, they won 3-0; Stokes’s captaincy played a massive part in England winning that. I think he’s been off it in this series. He’s probably had so much on, so much noise.”

Stokes – who called former England players “has-beens” before the series and later apologised – was defiant over his own future and backed McCullum as the best person to lead the team. But he conceded that England were being regularly outplayed by the best teams.

“When a trend is happening on a consistent basis,” Stokes said, “that’s when you do need to go back and look at the drawing board and make some adjustments.”

Sir Alastair Cook pinpointed England’s reckless approach in the first Test as setting the tone for everything that followed.

“Australia won all the big moments, the 4-1 scoreline doesn’t flatter them,” Cook said on TNT Sports. “It’s a fair reflection of the gulf between the sides … this was a big missed opportunity for England.

“You go back to the one big moment for me, which set the whole tone, it was that 100-1 in Perth, day two – [England] were effectively 100 runs ahead with one wicket down. Backstage, behind the scenes, all the ex-Aussies were gunning for the Australian side – they had been poor, they’d bowled poorly. England had to bat really well for one hour against one bowler, which at that time in the series was Mitchell Starc.

“They didn’t take that opportunity, and guess what? They let Australia off the hook, and from that moment on, those four wickets meant that Australia gained confidence, England lost confidence, and for me that was the clinical moment.”

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Another former captain, Michael Atherton, called for Cook to be involved in the England setup to support McCullum behind the scenes.

“Alastair Cook, if he could be persuaded, would be a perfect candidate,” wrote in The Times. “Having retired from Test cricket in 2018, he is in touch with the game, but distanced enough to have seen it from beyond the boundary.

“He is one of England’s greatest cricketers. He knows what it takes to succeed, having scored 33 Test hundreds. He won the Ashes at home, as captain, and away as a player. He captained England to home and away triumphs in India. He was equally good against pace and spin.

“He made himself into a champion by dint of a Stakhanovite work ethic. He could probably still outrun most of the players now. If McCullum’s great strength – and it is a great strength – is making his players feel 10ft tall, then Cook could help with the drive and the discipline.”

Kevin Pieterson was damning in his assessment, tweeting: “I’ll help with the thorough investigation that the ECB are going to conduct, right here, for free. Apart from Stokes, Root, Archer, Bethell & Brook WITH a brain, the team isn’t good enough to compete with Aus or India.”

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Geoffrey Boycott, meanwhile, hammered England’s leadership team, labelling McCullum, Key and Stokes “three stooges who sold a lie for three years”.

He wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “Joe Root has said ‘it would be silly to change the management team’. Really? After losing the Ashes so badly would any company or sporting entity say to their management team ‘the same again please’?

“Sport is a results business. This trio would not last five minutes in football or the commercial world. There is every chance the suits at the ECB will keep their heads down and hope all the fuss will eventually die down and then carry on as normal.”

Stokes accepted that England must learn from their mistakes on this Ashes tour. “I think we’re now playing against teams that have found answers to the style of cricket we’ve been playing for quite a long time,” he said.

“In the first couple of years, teams struggled to come up with ways to counter how we played, but now they’re developing plans that stand up to the style of cricket we want to play.

“When you come up against a team like Australia out here – a side that knows how to play in these conditions – and you contribute to your own downfall, you’re going to end up losing the series 4–1, as we have.”