England’s big issue is lack of homegrown alternatives to Brendon McCullum

The perils of being a young coach recently retired from the game are obvious. “I’ll get a random message sent to me [by a player] with a video package of me playing and they’ll say, ‘You tell me to do this, but you did this,’’’ one said recently. “And I just tell them, ‘Boys, if I had my career over again and I coached myself, I would have doubled what I averaged’. ”

There is so much to take from these words (I dread the players I coach seeing how ugly and technically awkward a batsman I once was), not least that they were uttered by Will Pucovski, the once-capped Australia batsman cruelly forced to retire early because of repeated concussions. He is only 28, and still managing his concussion symptoms, but is taking his first steps into coaching with his local Melbourne Cricket Club — which is wonderful to hear — and by all accounts is making quite the splash. “Not to make an exaggerated statement but he’s the best young coach I’ve ever seen,” one encomium said.

Good on Pucovski for not coaching his players to play as he did (so many coaches do), and given the travails he endured through his short career — it was not only his technique against the short ball that was always being questioned, but also his big back-and-across trigger movement from outside leg stump — it is probably not that surprising that he is showing such promising signs as a coach. Often those who have had to work hardest at the game are the ones easiest able to instruct and mentor the next generation.

But it also raises a question about the bright, young English coaches right now. Brendon McCullum has been retained as England head coach to some dissatisfaction among supporters, and I do not disagree with that decision because it is too easy to forget all the good and thoroughly entertaining work he and Ben Stokes, the captain, did before the Ashes debacle, but surely of more importance is the lack of obvious English alternatives should there have been a change.

This is not a new story — as evidenced by the foreigners Duncan Fletcher, Andy Flower and Trevor Bayliss having obviously been England’s better coaches — but at some point this trend surely has to be arrested. In fairness, that is what the ECB has been attempting to do in the long term by fast-tracking the likes of Andrew Flintoff, Stokes and Moeen Ali through the system. They gave James Anderson a go too before he realised his playing itch had to be scratched again.

Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell may be possibilities later, while Richard Dawson and Gareth Batty are also highly rated. Dawson, a former off spinner who is now the head coach at Glamorgan, is certainly doing his bit for the spin brigade by encouraging turning pitches in Cardiff and is being rewarded by Mason Crane’s continued improvements. A Test recall for Crane is not a fantasy if the leg spinner continues on that upward trend.

But the sobering reality at the moment is that the head coaches of seven of the eight men’s teams in the Hundred are foreigners (six of the eight Big Bash teams are coached by Australians by way of comparison), and there are also six overseas head coaches in the County Championship.

You could say that James Taylor is England’s equivalent to Pucovski. The 36-year-old is another whose career was cut bitterly short, in his case by a heart problem, and he is now the batting coach at Leicestershire after previously serving as a selector. However, those identified early and fully committed to coaching at all levels (the better technical coaches are better used in the younger age groups) still seem to be so rare.

Coaches come in various guises. McCullum and Flintoff are more like managers who do not delve into technical minutiae, while others revel in the detail and some just prefer to act as mentors. Finding those who can combine all three is unusual, so finding the right holes into which to fit the respective coaches is key.

The reality is that technical advice should only be offered sparingly during times of competition. Fletcher was brilliant technically but would only suggest anything when certain about the timing. He arrived at Glamorgan in 1997 and barely said a word for two weeks, with the captain Matthew Maynard fearing we had signed a “mute”. The most influential thing he ever said to me was nothing technical, just that I reminded him of Gary Kirsten, which was a ridiculous comparison because Kirsten was way better than me, but it made me feel 10ft tall.

Less is generally more when it comes to coaching advice, because every word leaves a mark. As Flower has always said, the greatest thing a coach can give a player is confidence, but the problem these days is that players expect so much from their coaches. That much was obvious from the recent, unflattering comments of some discarded players about McCullum, with Liam Livingstone a prime example.

“I was asking for help and pretty much all I got was that I care too much and I need to chill out a little bit, and everything will take care of itself,” he said to ESPNcricinfo. “I was just trying to ask for help to get better: what do they see that isn’t going right? You’d hit a couple out of the middle of the bat and they’d go, ‘Great, you found it. Let’s go back to the hotel.’ ”

But I know of another incident where Livingstone felt confused about his role because he was getting too much advice. Sometimes you just can’t win as a coach.

England have admitted to paring back their coaching staff too much, but I think their reasoning behind that — to make players take some responsibility themselves, as much as decluttering the dressing room — was sage.

But that did not sit well with Ben Foakes, who has complained about not having a wicketkeeping coach to help him, particularly in Pakistan in 2022, when the reserve batsman Keaton Jennings did the heavy work for him. “I did bring it up, but they didn’t want that sort of culture,” Foakes said. “They wanted to tighten it. They wanted everyone to kind of muck in for each other.”

It used to be that batters would throw to each other before a game. Now they book in for a slot with a coach using the sidearm, where there is little or no coaching. It is a question of balance. Players should, of course, expect a degree of help, but they should not use their coaches as crutches either.

Change at the top is not always the answer. The RFU sticking with Clive Woodward after the disappointing 1999 Rugby World Cup worked out rather well with triumph in 2003. Lessons can be learnt, methods tweaked and selections altered.

McCullum not being in England for the start of the championship season has attracted some negative comment, especially as bridges are supposedly being built between England and the counties, but does it really matter? He can watch anything he wants online, and often that is more instructive than watching live. And, contrary to common perception, and even without a national selector at present, England do watch, log, analyse and scout every single county match.

These early matches will count, for sure, but not all of them, and certainly not every passage of play and every match up. Some inform international selection, some don’t. It is fun suggesting that a certain performance has “nudged” the selectors, as I have already done above with Crane, and there has been much of that in the first round of matches regarding the likes of Emilio Gay and James Rew. There has also been added intrigue around, say, the wicketkeeper Rew batting at No3 in Somerset’s second innings, with Jamie Smith batting there for Surrey (and not keeping) and England’s recent No3, Ollie Pope, moving down to No4, but the truth is that it is far too early to make any definitive judgments. The first Test of the summer is not until June 4.

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