Harry Brook has a real problem – he is disrespecting spin

I look at English white-ball cricket over the last few years and think that given the players at their disposal, this is a team underperforming. They are a long way below where they should be.

The period between 2015 and 2019, culminating in that World Cup win, was a wonderful ride. The mindset of our entire white-ball game was changed by Eoin Morgan and Trevor Bayliss. I wonder if we might reflect in time that England have not won as much as they should after that.

There is still time to put that right, in the Champions Trophy in Pakistan this month and the T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka in a year’s time. The worry, though, is those conditions will expose England’s weakness – facing the spinning ball – that was clear for all to see in the T20 demolition by India.

Brendon McCullum has been charged with turning around the white-ball team’s fortunes. I love Baz, because he brings an abundance of entertainment and energy, and the players clearly love playing for him. That is important. McCullum has a clear strategy and identity for the team, which is a good thing as well. I am just not sure that strategy is the right one.

Tactically, I am not sure four pace bowlers wins you many games in the subcontinent. You look at the Indian Premier League. Teams are not picking four quicks. Maybe two or three, but not four. Brydon Carse was England’s best bowler because he varied his pace and was unpredictable. If you are going to bowl rockets, you have to bring the stumps into play. Otherwise you are reliant on a batsman error.

You need two quality spinners. They have one who is world-class, in Adil Rashid, but Rehan Ahmed is yet to play on this tour. Surely that is a missed opportunity.

They will need him to be in the T20 World Cup squad, and what happens if Rashid gets injured? He is magic, but he turns 37 this month. Ahmed is thrown into the cauldron of T20 cricket in India for the first time.

England also do not have a left-arm spinner. Liam Dawson does well in the leagues around the world but is persona non grata, and Tom Hartley went unselected through the group stage of last year’s World Cup. Jacob Bethell played three times in the T20 series but did not bowl.

The same is true of left-arm seam or swing, which every other team in the world have. England have had an abundance of them in recent years, such as Reece Topley, Sam Curran and David Willey, but none in this squad because they are not deemed quick enough.

With the bat, when McCullum took over the Test side, the Bazball approach was something genuinely new, a breath of fresh air in the game. He focused on entertainment, and making England “watchable”.

Bazball is not shocking to white-ball game

Now, he is using the same language around the white-ball team. But in limited-overs cricket, you do not need to worry about that. There is no shock factor or novelty in playing attacking white-ball cricket. When you have players with England’s talent, it is a given that it will be entertaining. What actually makes them watchable is being a little bit smart.

In the T20 series, England tried to play from ball one. Look at Chris Gayle, who is probably the greatest T20 player we have seen. He so often had 10 runs off 10 balls, because he knew he had the six-hitting prowess to catch up. All of them can hit sixes, but in the T20s they were not giving themselves a chance by having a look at Varun Chakravarthy for a few balls. You can take three runs from the first over to line him up and attack after.

They seemed to have a clear strategy to attack the first ball of the over. You see that in modern white-ball cricket, but that is actually what India want. In the World Cup next year, scores of 170 will normally be enough to win games, despite what we saw in Mumbai last weekend.

They just have to play spin better. They have a problem against it, as we saw at the World Cups in 2023 and 2024. Harry Brook is definitely part of that problem. Brook can clearly come good against spin. He has got the game and the gift to overcome anything. I just think he is too aggressive against spin. He almost disrespects it, and thinks he can just whack it out of the ground.

I would love him to watch Joe Root, who is a master of going back, hitting into the leg side, nabbing a two, or getting off strike. Sweeps and reverse sweeps to manoeuvre the field and create gaps. Do not just think boundary, boundary, boundary all the time. If Brook marries his own game with a bit of Root, he will be much better for it.

Brook and the rest of England’s batsmen will face a lot of wrist-spin, turning both ways, through the middle overs. They need to find a low-risk cruising speed, rather than trying to hit every ball for six.

When England were at their best, smashing 350 in ODIs on a regular basis, we forget how good Root was. And when they won the T20 World Cup it was Ben Stokes playing pragmatic cricket to get them over the line. Root manoeuvred the ball into the gaps, which allowed everyone else to be firecrackers.

There is a strong case to consider him for the T20 World Cup, but before then, I do not think they have a chance in the Champions Trophy without him playing well. The game has not changed so much that you do not need some glue, and Root will need to remind England’s big-hitters that 50 overs is a very long time.