England Test captain Ben Stokes has supported his partnership with head coach Brendon McCullum, saying that they remain closely aligned despite minor differences that came into focus during the 4-1 Ashes drubbing in Australia as well. He also stated that while he may have to work with McCullum in a “slightly different way”, the main objective will be unchanged as well.
However, both Stokes and McCullum held onto their roles after a review by the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB), and they will continue as a captain-coach pair heading into the next cycle, with a home Ashes slated for 2027.
“I’m very confident in mine and Brendon’s ability to be able to work together, because we’ve done it for such a long period of time now. But work together in a slightly different way,” Stokes told ECB in his first interview since the Ashes. “The main point of me and Brendon is our alignment towards winning things and making this team as good as they can be. That’s always been the thing since we started.”
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“It might just look a little bit different now to how that operates, on the back of four years working together. We still want to win everything, and we still want to give the guys the best chance that they possibly can of being as good as they can be,” he again shared.
Ben Stokes, however, dismissed suggestions of a rift, calling the idea of misalignment a “massive overstatement” in the larger scheme of things as well.
“As similar as me and Brendon are, we’re also dissimilar in other areas as well,” Stokes said. “But the thing we both want is to be as successful as we possibly can. How we get to being successful might be the same here, but slightly differs there, but we will always end up in the same place by having these discussions.”
“We agree 95% of the time on things, but those 5% things that we might have different views on, we talk about it between each other and then we end up getting to the place where we want to get to. Agreeing on every single thing, that’s just impossible. Saying we weren’t aligned, I think, is a massive overstatement,” he stated.
Ben Stokes, however, had publicly backed Brendon McCullum to continue as head coach after the Ashes setback. While Stokes is contracted through the next Ashes, McCullum is set to remain in charge until the subsequent World Cup as well.
“With what me and Brendon were able to achieve with the group over a four-year period, I just couldn’t imagine doing what we were trying to do with anyone else,” concluded Ben Stokes. “We’re both very proud men in what we do. We put a lot of our heart and soul into this job. Brendon certainly has for the four years he’s done it so far, and hopefully we’ll still be together at the end of 2027, winning what we want to win.”
