Rob Key

But in terms of the planning for these things, now that's not just a position where I'm at.

That's a whole thing for the game in this country, for the ECB in particular, because generally the way that we plan and the way that the schedule is done, and a lot of this schedule is done before I'm in this post four years ago, that we end up playing against New Zealand.

Now, there's not a world in where if you want the perfect preparation, you find yourself playing in New Zealand before you go to the Ashes.

But in English cricket, in the world game, in the global game,

It's not always high performance.

It's not always about what's best for that series that takes priority.

We had that through the whole of the white ball under Matthew Mott and Joss Butler.

So what we're trying to do is make sure that the next dash is out there.

We have a clear window that we can prepare properly for that.

So you can go to the point where you might want to play more matches.

So you don't find yourself... The same thing happened with the World Cup.

People said we prepared better for that.

That was...

Done a while ago where we go to Sri Lanka before the World Cup.

We were actually meant to play a game on the 15th of January, which was five days after the Ashes finished.

And that's after New Zealand, after the Ashes.

They want us to jump on a plane and go straight away and play a white ball series against Sri Lanka.

And Richard Gould was very good, actually, and he made sure we didn't have to play those five ODIs out there because that wasn't the best preparation.

And that's not always been the case when it comes down to planning and preparation.

That's a thing for people above me, really, to make sure that we don't do it.