Jamie DowlingUnder fire England men's cricket Head Coach Brendon McCullum is moaning again.
Top level professional sport is all about winning. Coaches and players are paid mind numbing sums of money, get to travel first class, get the best health insurance and treatment and equipment sponsors.
And with that comes expectation of performance, on and off field conduct and examination of those.
As the batter who scored 158 not out in the very first IPL match, giving the BCCI just what it wanted in terms of publicity and fuelling their machine, you can't tell me that McCullum doesn't understand or accept these.
He has been part of the BCCI money making machine for long enough to know this.
By any metric the recent Ashes tour was a disaster. Which could and maybe should have been avoided with better planning and preparation.
Harry Brook's disciplinary issues in New Zealand and his lying to "protect his team mates" show to me that Brook is not mature enough to be in a leadership position of a national team.
By claiming that there was "no need to release information about the disciplinaries until they hit the media", McCullum is saying that he doesn't give a [insert preferred slang for faeces] about the optics of representing the national side or about transparency over player behaviour.
I have no love for a number of journalists on the cricket circuit (George Dobell is an exception, he's a fine man and a fair journalist), but if the Head Coach is going to cover up poor behaviour then every journo should dig like hell.
Words have meanings. When people in high profile positions say things, it matters. It shows the thinking going on and the awareness or lack thereof of the context.
The optics here are very poor. Another reason why McCullum isn't the right choice for England men's cricket Head Coach IMO.
