Trailblazer Brendon McCullum is in no rush to lead England revolution

When the leadership combination of Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key, as captain, coach and team director of England’s men’s Test team, was formed, it felt like revolution might be in the air.

One Test squad later and that feeling has dwindled to one of evolution at best, with the only two fresh faces selected unlikely to make the final eleven at Lord’s next week.

Hopefully, this feeling of ‘same old, same old’ is temporary — at least until McCullum, a man with no red-ball coaching experience but an approach to cricket red in tooth and claw, can better assess those in the frame for selection. A trailblazer in white-ball cricket, where data analysis rules, McCullum nevertheless prizes players who buy into his philosophies about team and approach — cricketers he tends to identify by judgment and not statistics.

Discovering who those players are will take time but it must be better than the crude, and so far unsuccessful, trial and error which has seen England use 13 players over the past 15 months to fill five of the top seven batting spots not taken by Stokes or departing captain Joe Root.

Aside from the turmoil, which has resulted in the team winning just one of its last 17 Tests, the real failure here is we are still none the wiser as to who the best options might be. Typically, in times of despondency, county cricket takes the blame, principally for not producing enough players ready to make the step-up to Test cricket — a point aired regularly over the last 50 years. County cricket’s culpability is not absolute, due to the way the fixture list is designed, but McCullum will have his ideas how to remedy any shortcomings though they will not happen overnight.

Meanwhile, in his Test squad, he has Harry Brook and Matty