England certainly looked better than they did in the latter days of Matthew Mott’s reign as white-ball coach as they fought back from 2-0 down to take their ODI series against Australia to a decider.
Defeat in that match in Bristol on Sunday illustrates there is still a long way to go. But the freshness in personnel and mindset was evident as they pushed the world champions all the way across five matches.
Ben Duckett, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Matthew Potts and Jofra Archer, playing his first non-T20 cricket for 18 months, all showed that they can be part of the future for this one-day team.
Yet the road to the 2027 World Cup is a long one, and if England are to repeat their win in the 2019 tournament under former captain Eoin Morgan, there will be many difficult decisions for Brendon McCullum to make once he adds the leadership of the white-ball teams to his current role of Test coach in January.
Chief among them will be deciding whether the quartet of captain Jos Buttler, Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Mark Wood are in his plans for that next World Cup in southern Africa. All four will be 36 or older come the tournament.
Given the schedule, Buttler will be the only one to return for England’s white-ball tour of the Caribbean that starts later this month. That’s presuming he has recovered from the calf injury that ruled him out of the Australia series.
Those ODI and T20 series against the West Indies will be the last assignment for interim coach Marcus Trescothick ahead of McCullum’s ascension in the New Year.
And as good as Harry Brook looked captaining the team in Buttler’s absence against Australia, McCullum will be giving the incumbent every chance to show he can bring the best out of this group when England tour India early next year before heading to the Champions Trophy in Pakistan.
That tournament, a mini-World Cup played between the top eight ODI teams in the world, will be a bellwether for this group.
It’s likely that Buttler, Root, Stokes and Wood will all return for it. Whether or not they will all remain in McCullum’s plans afterwards will depend on how they fare – not only in terms of form but fitness too.
Root, who will be 36 by the time of the 2027 World Cup, looks the most likely to be able to remain an integral part of the team. He would most certainly be an upgrade at No 3 from Will Jacks, who played in that position against Australia.
Buttler, who will relinquish the wicketkeeping gloves when he returns, also has every chance of remaining in the team, probably at No5, over the next three years even if he loses the captaincy at some point.
Wood and Stokes, whose ages and injury histories count against them, are less certain. Any team would love to have them.
Yet it might seem a stretch even for the arch-optimist McCullum to keep both, fresh, fit and in form across the Test and ODI formats as they hit their mid-30s.
One thing McCullum will bring to this group will be a return to the ultra-aggressive approach that served England so well under Morgan.
There was a partial return to it in the series against Australia, especially in the performances of Duckett, now assured of keeping his place at the top of the order alongside Phil Salt, Brook, who scored 110 not out, 87 and 72 in the last three matches, and Liam Livingstone, whose 62 from 27 balls lit up Lord’s in last Friday’s series-levelling victory.
Yet it was interesting that during England’s collapse from 202 for 2 to 309 all out in Bristol on Sunday that Morgan, commentating for Sky Sports, was critical of the team not going hard enough. Asked why they shouldn’t try and consolidate after losing a couple of wickets, Morgan replied: “Because you end up in a place like this.”
McCullum will ensure that positive mindset will be hammered home to the ODI squad much like it has been for the Bazballers in the Test team over the past two-and-a-half years.
Yet his chances of winning the 2027 World Cup will be defined by just how loyal he should remain to the quartet of ageing senior players who have been so integral to England’s success over the years.
