Stokes has left a vacuum – is McCullum really the coach to mould a young England team?

The New Zealander was the right man to take on the job of persuading a group of jaded senior players to play brilliant cricket, but may not suit a rebuild Wait, what? Four days on, and nothing about the weekend that’s just gone seems to make much sense. It was England’s seventh defeat in nine Tests, and somehow, at the end of it, they’ve lost the last man anyone really wanted to go . Ben Stokes, his own man all the way to the end, has apparently decided he would rather spend his remaining days in the game playing championship cricket for Durham. A man whose career has been marked by copper-bottomed self-conviction has left English cricket facing a whole lot of questions. The first of them is whether Brendon McCullum is really the right man to try to rebuild this England team in the years ahead. Continue reading...