‘What a load of bulls…’: Geoffrey Boycott torches Stokes and McCullum’s Ashes plans as England fold in ‘horror show’

In a column for The Telegraph, Boycott wrote that this Australian side “was there to be beaten”, but England’s performance with bat, ball and in the field was so poor that “after just six days of Ashes cricket, England need a miracle.”

“Brisbane was a horror show: irresponsible batting, bowling too short, too wide or too full and catches dropped,” he wrote, before twisting the knife. “With this sort of batting and bowling, they couldn’t win an egg cup, let alone the Ashes urn.”

“What a load of bulls….”: Stokes, McCullum and the echo-chamber

Boycott’s angriest passage is reserved for the leadership talk around this tour.

Ben Stokes has repeatedly said England had a “blueprint”, that they’d been planning this trip for four years and “know what they are doing.” Boycott is having none of it.

“What a load of bulls—. We can’t believe anything Ben or his team say. None of them wants to listen to anyone outside of their own camp,” wrote Boycott. He paints the Stokes-McCullum regime as a closed bubble that thinks it has reinvented Test cricket. “They are up their own backsides convinced that Test cricket has changed so much that only they know anything about the modern game.”

For Boycott, the messaging from the top is part of the problem. “All we ever hear from the captain is attack, and from the coach, keep the faith,” he wrote. In his view, that has bred a culture with no fear of consequences: players aren’t scared of being dropped, so the same mistakes repeat, especially in batting.

Harry Brook, Ollie Pope and the “brainless” dismissals

Harry Brook cops a huge spray. Boycott calls his first-innings shot – an airy waft at a wide ball without moving his feet – “a shocker.” “I couldn’t reach it with my Mum’s sweeping brush,” wrote the former English batter. He further describes Brook as a “once in a lifetime talent” who “bats like a baseball batter looking for a home run every ball” and accuses him of batting with a “disregard for the team situation.”

“So far in tight situations, Harry has let the team down… So far the penny has not dropped, maybe it never will.”

Ollie Pope, on a pair in the second innings, is ripped for trying to drive “on the up” to a good-length ball when England needed someone to dig in. “You need to sell your wickets dearly. Too many times, Ollie gives it away…. He never learns, and he never fails to disappoint,” Boycott added.

Zak Crawley and Joe Root are the rare positives – Crawley for making a visible effort to tighten his defence, Root for a super-controlled maiden Test hundred in Australia, though even Root is chided for half-hearted off drive the second time around.

Boycott calls out England’s bowling

Boycott calls England’s first innings bowling “rubbish”, hammering their obsession with short stuff. More than 250 runs, he points out, leaked through the third man and fine leg as Australia pulled, hooked, and upper-cut.

“Why were we not bowling in the corridor of uncertainty… That is our strength, not bombarding the batsmen with short stuff,” wrote Boycott. Brydon Carse, he says, “was trying to knock a hole in the middle of the pitch” while the Australians simply set themselves to belt him. Jofra Archer, after two early spells, “lost his menace,” looking short of proper first-class match fitness.

Even selection doesn’t escape Boycott’s scrutiny. Will Jacks is praised for a stunning one-handed catch and a gutsy 41, but then dismissed in typically Boycott style, “If he is a Test match cricketer… no disrespect intended but he is a hit and giggle batsman in T20, and my Mum could play his bowling with my proverbial stick of rhubarb.”

His bottom line is brutal: this is not about buzzwords or blueprints. Until England abandon the comfort of their own hype and rediscover discipline, he simply doesn’t trust this regime to win an Ashes series in Australia.