Former England batsman Rob Key had previously expressed interest in the job and will succeed Ashley Giles in the role; Key’s first jobs will include the appointment of a new England Test captain and head coach.
Nasser Hussain believes Rob Key is the right man to move England forward after being appointed managing director of the men’s team.
Key, who will relinquish his role as expert with sky sports to take over, he joins as England look for a new trial captain following Joe Root’s decision to step down and a permanent head coach, and he’s thrilled to be entrusted with this responsibility.
There’s a lot for the 42-year-old to get stuck into, and here, Nasser runs through the immediate issues on the to-do list.
I am very happy for Rob and I think the ECB has made an excellent choice. I don’t know who the other candidates were, but I’ve worked with Rob for the last six years and while he sometimes plays dumb, he’s not.
There are times when he has said things on the air or at the back of the box and you think ‘this lad knows his cricket’. He is absolutely a cricket man through and through; his daughter plays in the age groups for Kent, he played and was captain for Kent, and he played for England.
I think England have made a good choice, they are an excellent cricketer and have a very good cricketing brain.
People, once they get to know Rob, work with him and understand him, know that he has a lot of good ideas about the game and that he’s not afraid to stick his head over the parapet or have a different opinion than everyone else. .
He will stand up for what he believes in and he’s stubborn about it to a certain extent, but I like that stubbornness and he won’t be swayed, and I think that’s what this role needs. People will come up with hundreds of ideas, but what you need is someone with a very clear direction, who is not swayed by pundits, newspapers and the media.
The short term has to be the two or three important decisions you have to make. I think the coach is very important because he has to decide the captain, but you want the coach’s opinion on who he thinks he should be the captain.
I would probably say coach first, although I would take a trip down the A1 to talk to Ben Stokes and see where he is mentally and physically, and if he wants the job and feels he is in the right place to do it as England. captain, but he will also want the opinion of the coach.
Another important decision is selection: Will the selection committee go back to the way it was before the Silverwood-Root era, where the coach and captain picked the team?
Are you going to split the trainers with a one day trainer and a trial trainer? Then there is the act of keeping the ball rolling in cue ball cricket as well. Part of the reason we are here now is the white ball reset, which led us to win the World Cup, made us take our eyes off the red ball and found ourselves bottom of the World Test Championship.
So let’s not go to the other side and focus on red ball cricket. Talk to Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler about how we continue to improve the cue ball side as well. Those are very important short-term decisions that you have to get right.
However, he knows he only gets it right with county ingredients and setup, and I know Rob has a deep passion for county cricket – he texted me two weeks ago about some young players he was watching.
I can guarantee you that he will be watching a broadcast of a county game. He loves county cricket and that will be vital in getting the ingredients to the test team.
I have already seen tweets and comments about ‘jobs for the boys’ and those asking how management has done before. It’s an administrative role, that’s correct, but I’d rather have a cricket person as a cricket MD, someone who understands the game, rather than someone who can make a great PowerPoint presentation. You will have to work on the administrative side.
He’s very player-friendly, and the players will be pleased that Rob Key is England’s new MD, but he’s going to have to be tough on the players, and sometimes he’s going to have to say no to them.
She turned to me about a year ago and asked, ‘How many things has Ashley Giles said no to? Aside from taking football away from warm-ups, what else has she said she hasn’t?
Rob Key will soon have to discover that it will have to be unpopular times. Leadership is not a popularity contest, you’re going to have to tell players and coaches sometimes: no, we’re not going down that road.
I’m absolutely sure, from what I know of Rob Key: he plays dumb, but he’s not dumb, he’s a very smart cookie.
We can all talk a lot about who we want as captain and manager, but it depends on who is available. Some of the foreign coaches have lucrative IPL jobs, would they be willing to give that up?
The England cue ball team has Morgan in charge, and you could even discuss in three or six months, Buttler could take over the captaincy and Morgan could end up as captain of the cue ball team. I don’t see any problem with that, Morgan is a fantastic leader of men.
But the test match side is underperforming, they need a bit of a kick in the butt and a change in culture. The ingredients are there: we are not the best side in the world, but we are by no means the worst side in the world and that is exactly where we sit.
