Will rock’n’roll England of Stokes and McCullum blow away Australia?

A fter the recent Test against Ireland at Lord’s, with a dressing room full of the bucket hats he had ordered staring back at him, Ben Stokes delivered a calm, precise message: to regain the Ashes, none of what had got England to this point changes.

Whatever happens next against a fine Australia side, that a team chewed up so badly by their opponents 18 months ago will hit Edgbaston this week so emboldened – happy to spend the intervening time on Scotland’s golf courses – says a fair bit about the mentality shift under Stokes’s captaincy and the charisma of Brendon McCullum.

Rob Key gave the diagnosis when he swapped the role of commentator for England team director at the start of last season. He made a bet with himself that, despite the flatlining results that prompted regime change, the team were blessed with good players who were trying too hard, wanted it too much and in a jaded struggle through the pandemic’s fug of fixture fulfilment, were “suffocating”.

Key also knew Stokes was set to hit the task hard as the clouds of bubble life and his mental health problems the previous summer lifted. Had he sought to offset the captain’s returning flame with an intense “drill sergeant” head coach or one who was overly technical and fastidious, the result of this fire and ice, to quote the Spinal Tap bassist, Derek Smalls, would have been lukewarm water.

McCullum was in the foothills of a Twenty20 coaching career but had been the name buzzing around Key’s mind since the start, impressed by his captaincy of New Zealand. That joyful team had already been the muse for England’s white-ball resurgence under Eoin Morgan and Trevor Bayliss, with the former asked for a reference on an admittedly close friend but having also seen