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By Will Macpherson and Nick Hoult
January 7, 2026 — 8.30am
Brendon McCullum’s hopes of remaining England head coach rest on whether he is willing to accept an ultimatum of making major changes to the team’s environment and culture.
England and Wales Cricket Board officials are already conducting a review into the Ashes debacle, which saw Australia claim the urn in just 11 days, before a win in Melbourne, which was their first Test victory on Australian soil since January 2011.
England coach Brendon McCullum (right) with skipper Ben Stokes.Credit: Getty Images
The London Telegraph understands that the current position of the ECB is that they do not want to make changes to the management trio of McCullum, captain Ben Stokes and director of cricket Rob Key. While there is still a match on the tour to finish, which means no final decisions can be made, there appears to be little appetite for sweeping change to the hierarchy.
The position of Stokes in particular seems safe. However, the ECB does want significant changes to be made to the team environment and for McCullum and Key to accept that the culture and their wider approach needs to become more professional and robust.
Both men have already accepted publicly that England were not adequately prepared for the series, but it is unclear whether McCullum would accept being told that the approach of the team must change, which leaves open the possibility that he could leave in the coming months.
McCullum is more of a man-manager and tactical guide than a hands-on technical coach, and has run the England team in a very specific way over the past four years.
The backroom staff has been heavily stripped back, players have been trusted to make their own decisions, and the warm-up match schedule before tours has been slimmed down.
Exactly what changes the ECB would implement is unclear, but they could look to beef up the backroom staff and crack down on off-field behaviour after accusations of a drinking culture among players, which was at its most fierce before the Melbourne Tests when concerning reports and social media footage emerged from their mid-series break in Noosa.
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The trio of Key, McCullum and Stokes have been running England’s Test team since May 2022, with the role of white-ball head coach added to McCullum’s brief at the end of the 2024 summer.
McCullum won 12 of his first 13 Tests in charge of England, but his record has flatlined since. While he has won eight out of 10 series that are shorter than five matches, he has failed to win any of his four big series against Australia or India.
It seems almost certain that McCullum will lead England to the T20 World Cup, which starts on February 8. Before that, England have a tour to Sri Lanka, which will feature a number of the Ashes squad, including white-ball captain Harry Brook.
Much power would appear to lie in the hands of Stokes. He has publicly backed McCullum, but will only offer his full take on the tour to the ECB when the series is over.
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McCullum and Stokes are both contracted until the end of the 2027 summer.
The review is being run internally by chief executive Richard Gould and chairman Richard Thompson, each of whom has been at three of the five Ashes Tests.
Gould was in Perth and Brisbane, while Thompson was in Adelaide and Melbourne. Both men are in Sydney for the final Test of the series.
Telegraph, London
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