Brendon McCullum has been sacked as head coach of the England men's Test team, though he will remain in charge of the white-ball sides. The departure, framed by BBC correspondent Stephan Shemilt as the end of a dramatic era, leaves the red-ball side without both a captain and a coach for the first time in four years, following Ben Stokes's exit two weeks earlier. It marks a stark fall from the exhilarating "Bazball" period that briefly made England more than just a cricket team.

The article traces the decline to a catastrophic batting collapse — nine wickets for 99 runs — in the first Ashes Test at Perth, described as perhaps the most consequential in English cricketing history. Appointed at Lord's in May 2022, McCullum liberated an experienced group including Stokes, Root, Anderson and Broad after a run of one win in 17, delivering memorable victories over New Zealand, India and Pakistan. However, his self-described non-technical, man-management style proved ill-suited to developing younger players such as Jamie Smith, Gus Atkinson and Shoaib Bashir, and a 4-1 Ashes defeat — which he admitted stemmed from overestimating the youngsters' readiness — ultimately sealed his fate despite a move to a more disciplined "Bazball-lite" regime.