Rob Key

If you lose, you're always going to

Well, he's going to, yeah.

I think that the balance that I've tried to strike, and it's part of it with the county game, I've actually tried in this role to not be a person that moans about county cricket, to actually let county cricket not be in the way if they don't, if our players aren't opening the bowling or batting where we think, that's fine because they've got championships to win and they've got stuff to do.

And that's probably wrong, actually.

you know so with brendan mccullum to answer your question we're going to meet at in um

We're meeting, I think, on the 30th, where we're going to have all the DOCs and any of the coaches that they want.

Brendan's going to be on that call, so it's not quite your traipse around the counties.

And we're just going to explain exactly what we're looking for, so there's no doubt about what England cricket or what the England cricket team in all formats needs.

So they get the chance to do that.

When he was doing the job, half the job,

Him and Ben, we got them all to speak to the DOCs then.

Since he's been doing it full-time, I think it's a tough job.

So I've tried to actually, when you're not in series or on tour, you can actually just get away from the game, which is the balance we've tried to strike.

So he's going to do what you suggest, just not travelling around.

No, no, I think there's lots of external advice we've used over time, whether it was after the Champions Trophy when we went with all pace.

We got one person from the English game who wasn't a part of our setup to come in and speak about the things or what they saw.

I had someone from the subcontinent as well.

who actually gave us some massive insight into what we do.

I think Warnie and I met in the summer and he spoke about Australia and how spin isn't as effective as what it has been over the last few years.

The pitches have changed.