Test Match Special - Project Ashes Ep 1: The Plans

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

For the last 12 months, Jonathan Agnew has been given exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the England men’s cricket team’s planning to win back the Ashes. Throughout the year, Aggers has spoken to key players, including Joe Root, Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson and many more, but also those names who are less familiar, but still play crucial roles – the tour planners, the nutritionists, the fitness teams. In Episode One, we go back to January. Joe Root is in Sri Lanka, and Aggers catches up with him to find out what England’s long-term plans are. But as the tours of Sri Lanka and India continue, it’s clear that England’s rest and rotation policy is becoming increasingly unpopular, especially as England start to lose in India.

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That is the Sports Desk on BBC Sounds. Hit subscribe and a new episode will appear every Friday. The Sports desk from BBC Sports. Available now on BBC Sounds. Now, back to your podcast. The Ashes is the ultimate prize in English cricket. Oh, is it? Is it the Ashes? Yes, England of one.

Up comes both of them now. He bows to Alderman. I bowled him and England of one. Foles to Stokes who hammers it for four. And scans there with the back. That is the most extraordinary innings ever, ever be played by English. England have only won once in Australia in the last 34 years. Eight series, one victory.

And we're underway, finally. Armisen from the far end, Bowles the first ball of the series. Oh my word, it's gone straight to second slip. What a horrible start. From the last ten tests England have played there, they've lost nine, drawn one, one none. It's all over. Australia have won, a crushing victory by an innings and 123 runs. They saved the biggest steamroller for last year.

This will be my ninth Ashes tour for the BBC, but I've never really found out just what goes on behind the scenes to prepare a team for the ultimate test, and how much planning and preparation it takes. So over the last year, I've been speaking to the people who are in charge of England's attempts to win down under, those who play a big part on the pitch. I need to make sure that work goes in a couple of years ahead of being,

out in Australia. It's loud and it's a high percentage of Australians there and they let you know that they don't like you. They come up against this baggy green thing that they keep talking about. We'll be having my baggy blues on. I'd love to stick one up them. And off the pitch. We're in constant dialogue with cricket Australia around details such as what nets we've got, middle wicket capabilities, access to net bowlers at a certain period. One of them laughed because they saw me doing it and they say, why are we removing the frosties? We're not eating frosties before a game. You're just trying to make sure that when we get off the plane in in Australia that

The lads are kind of leaner, faster, memorably fit than ever before. This is Project Ashes. It's January 2021. Joe Roots in Sri Lanka. He's just scored a brilliant double century to help England win a test match in Gaul. He's in and he's hard sweep through midwicket. It's going to run away the boundary. That's it.

200 for Joe Root. It's his fourth double hundred. It's been an absolutely. I'm not in Gaul. I'm at home at Leicestershire, trying to make the Wi-Fi work. Thanks for doing this, mate. Now look, um, okay, hang on. Where have you gone? I'll press the wrong button. I'm still there, yes. This is a nice, sorry, I've got to turn a volume up. Um, I've found a few technical issues working from home, as you may have heard. Joe's frozen there. Oh, God.

We get there eventually. Okay, Joe, well, let's start the very beginning. Do you look upon this year as being the biggest of your career? I'd say so. I'd say the amount of cricket that we've got, the challenges that this year presents for a number of different reasons, I think it probably is. And with it being a big year, that presents great opportunity

and certainly viewing it in that manner. And I feel like we've done everything we can coming into it to be in a very good place to give ourselves a really good chance of having some good success. They're the sort of years that you really want to grab by this gruff of the neck, have a real influence on individual games and win some really big series and tournaments.

And as a team, you look at that and think, well, what a great opportunity is for us to share everyone what we're capable of. And to turn what's been a very promising couple of years into, I suppose, the coming of age for our team. I think there's a number of things that not only will aid us very well, I believe we'll aid us very well when we get out to Australia, but we'll aid us anyway

in test cricket. Things like the way we look to play the game, trying to make really big first inning scores and it's something that we've got better out of the last year and a half or so. We started to see six out of the last 12 occasions we've made scores of over 400 and we're becoming more and more consistent at doing that, which I think is really important. I think one thing as well as finding ways to take wickets abroad has been a real challenge for us in previous tours and previous years and over the last couple of years we have made strides in that in that area as well so there are things there's there's aided that whether it's the balance of the side the balance of the attack the personnel that we've we've gone with i think they've all sort

come together nicely to this point and we are very aware that there's still a lot of hard work and things that need to be done if we're going to be even better at it and you know be able to be consistent with that. So the challenge over the next period is to try and be even better than we have been previously on executing those things. But we're certainly heading in the right direction. Let's try and get insight on how you're thinking. How close are you in your mind to having that first test team at the Gabba? And what spots can you see? What vacancies can you see? But I mean, have you any idea at all yet as to how many you've got in your mind? Try not to look at an 11, I try and look at a squad and try and look at how many players will need in each position.

Batting order would it be as a pace of attack, spinners, keepers, try and split it up like that and see how many players will need ready to go and match hard and for a tour of Australia. You know, at a minute, if everyone stays fit, we are looking very promising. promising. There will be opportunities for guys to get more games under their belt and to really push a case, show that they've got what it takes to perform at test cricket and a test level, which I think, you know, you can't ready yourself for an Ashes tour other than by playing lots of test cricket. So those games and those opportunities could be crucial in terms of having guys, even within the squad that I've got a good experience under their belt ahead of that tour.

The day I speak to Root is a significant one. While he's in Sri Lanka, and I'm in Melton Mowbray, events the night before in Brisbane have shaken the cricket world. Three needed, and Richard Pant is about to explode at this ball, I think. Hazelwood goes in, and he gets a full toss, and he drives it, threw him it off, it's going down towards the boundary, it's going to go for four, it's all over. India of one, India of won magnificently.

you could say this is one of the greatest wins India have ever had in their test history Australia had just lost a home series to an India team ravaged by injury India chased down 328 but significantly for England it meant Australia had lost their first test at the Gaba where the ashes will start since 1988 one thing that India did extremely well I feel is they showed great character they showed great resilience and courage

I think that's one of our best trades so I feel that that could really play to our favour if we handle ourselves well up to that point. So Alastair Cook has played against Australia 35 times and he's won the Ashes four times. So he knows a thing or two about what a captain has to do to prepare for Australia. You do start planning, but you just still don't know what's happening day to day.

It's such a balance because you look for it, you say, right, you look at the ashes, right, that's in two years' time, but you can't take your eye of what's happening right now. The big area where they will probably spend a lot of their time will be the bowling unit and making sure if they can, we'll get all their seven or eight bowling options fit for November. That'll be their ultimate aim, won't it,

in terms of the test cricket. We'll make sure that they can pick, they've got everyone available to pick from, and whichever combination they choose, they can choose that probably the day before, two days before. but that's what in an ideal world, Chris Silverwood and Joe Rood want to get all of those guys fit and ready to go. And Australia will be exactly the same, you know, making sure their four, you know, their pace bowlers are coming Stark and Hayswood with line backing them up are fit for that November thing. Because if they're not, if one of those is missing, that's a massive advantage to England.

If you're Joe Rout now, would you be excited about the prospect for the winter? Do you think that Hill, Fillingham can do it? I do think he does, because, A, of what's just happened with what India have done, and India have shown England how to win in Australia, and you have to be so resilient and so patient to take the game deep. And if England can do that, we know this Australian side doesn't handle the pressure that well. The history suggests over the last couple of years they don't do it that well. Headingly is a prime example.

So despite being in the subcontinent, Ash's planning is definitely underway. We've been planning about the Ashes for a long time now. I think you need to. I think you really do need to look far ahead and you need to make sure that work goes in a couple of years ahead of being out in Australia. And we've, since the last Ashes, been looking very closely at what we need to do to build a team that's going to win in those conditions.

Of course, that's all happening quietly in the background and happening behind the scenes and away from the line night. They will serve us very well and those games come round. So those things that are happening quietly behind the scenes, there's one man in charge of most of them. You might not have heard of Moe Bobat. He's a former PE teacher from Leicestershire. He's younger than Jimmy Anderson,

but he has one of the most important jobs in English cricket. He works with the head coach Chris Silverwood. Chris and I started at pretty much the same time, actually, so we've been able to forge our roles and our role clarity between us at the same time together, really. So the simplest way to describe it is Chris obviously focuses on the match and the series in front of him. And given the fact that we're always playing cricket,

he's always on and he's always trying to win games of cricket. And I guess my role is to support him with the medium and the long term. You know, player preparation for the next series is probably that medium term. And then when I mentioned the longer term stuff, that's, I guess, my leadership oversight of our pathway. So that's the Lions program, the Young Lions or Under 19 program, but also lots of other functions that underpin some of that work. So I oversee our elite coaching team and I deploy those coaching resources to Chris and the senior team. performance analysis, talent identification, and also our national base, which is our performance centre. So quite a broad remit for the longer term stuff. So when did you start planning for

this Ashes tour then? Chris and I started almost immediately as we started our roles. So we started in sort of October, November 2019, off the back of what was an amazing summer, as we all remember. But as soon as we started our roles, we knew that we were building towards this winter. we obviously had at that stage we thought we had a T20 World Cup last year another one this year but they both got bumped down the road so we always knew we were dealing with

some real important competitive challenges but the ashes was obviously front and centre for us as something that we wanted to build towards and prepare for as well as we can where do you start can you imagine or can remember what the first thing that you did was really

from the outset really we had some plans around how we would approach this and do this differently and hopefully be more successful than we have done in the past. You know, we're under no illusions, you know, in our last 10 tests, but 9-0 down. So we now have some challenge it is. Straight away, Bobat and his team looked to get the extended squad experience of Australian conditions. Back at the start of 2020, before COVID, before bio-bubbles, quarantines and everything else,

after the South Africa test series, England took the Lions team. That's the team of test hopefuls and up-and-coming players to play an unofficial test match at the MCG. and playing in that game was Zach Crawley, Dom Sibley, Dan Lawrence and Olly Robinson. I remember spending time talking to each of them about their programme and saying to them, look, you're going to have done really well in South Africa and you feel like you're in an England shirt right now, but I still want you to come out on this line's trip to Australia. And I realise that it's going to add cricket to your winter

and you've got enough on and you're probably ready for a break. But the reason we want to take you out to Australia is we want you to bank some of that experience. So that, you know, Zach, when you walk out of that, the MCG to bat, you feel like you've done that before. And they really brought into that, to be fair to all of them. They had a really busy winter with England and South Africa, but they all understood the logic of, well, if we bank some game time in Australia, we'll get used to conditions, we'll get used to what it's like to be there, even the intimidating, what can be an intimidating arena like the MCG, you know, spent some time training and playing

there. And obviously, we did pretty well on that trip. That Lions match showed Bobat, who might be able to perform well in Australian conditions and therefore possibly in the ashes. If we look at the batters, one of the things we knew was that history tells us that debuting a batter in the ashes is a bad idea. There aren't many examples of it working particularly well.

So we wanted to try and transition players into roles so that they were relatively well-established and experienced by the time they got. So take someone like Dan Lawrence as an example. If you talk about how details is this planning, banking some Australia experience in him and challenging him at Lions level was one of the things we wanted to do

he came through that with flying colours the question you then say to yourself is okay if he's someone who might fulfil a role at the ashes when do you want him to debut because you don't want it to be at the Gabba so you then work out over the course of that period when do you want to give him an experience I think also we try and be specific around

when's a good debut and that's different for everyone but we know Dan's a strong player of spin so debuting in the subcontinent for him was probably not a bad idea okay so let's try and get him to the game time there Does it work? Oh, here we go. Just indeed.

The debut man. Dan Lawrence. Tricky. Tricky. Trickie. Bull spinning. In Sri Lanka, a couple of spinners. Men around the bat.

Good luck. There will be nerves. They will be nerves exactly on test debut. And then all of a sudden you arrive at the ashes where he's played a few games and he's not new to him. And that's the type of planning you do. Lawrence goes back into his crease. Cuts nicely off his first ball into the covers and he's off the marks straight away. Well done.

To Lawrence on 49. Lawrence Clipsis. There's no mid on in. It's an easy single. and Lawrence gets exactly what he was looking for. A maiden half century. He's 50 not out from 95 balls. He applauds from the England team backup staff.

And that's a great moment for Dan Lawrence. Yeah, well played Dan Lawrence. He's coming there and look completely at home, hasn't he? We did a similar analysis for fast bowlers. Now, being fresh or debuting in an ashes seems to be less of an issue for bowlers. There are examples of us having done that in the past and it working okay. But the bigger thing for them is, is how do you get the right bandwidth of cricket into them? So take someone like Ollie Robinson or Craig Overton or even what we try to do with

Ollie Stone. You're trying to make sure that they play the right volume and frequency of games over the course of two years leading into it. And we did all the analysis on what that amount of cricket looks like. You try and match that as closely and as well as you can. And, you know, that includes the number of times they bowl 40 overs, the number of times they breached 30 overs, you know, all those sorts of things we look at. And you try and manage that as closely and accurately as you can. But you're always reacting to things that derail you, four ways. So 2021 gets off to a good start for England. Bearstow sweeps out towards a deep square leg. It beats the infield, hits the boundary, and Johnny Bairsto hits the winning

runs for England. They've done it. They've won by seven wickets. One to win. He flicks it away through midwicket. There it is. Sibley hits the winning run. England have won by six wickets after a dramatic fourth day in which Sri Lanka collapsed and England held their nerve. Three consecutive wins, two in Sri Lanka and then one in India, the captain in the form of his life. But even in Chennai and Ahmedabad, with the ashes seemingly a million miles away, Markwood told me that they had an eye on what they'd face down under. Behind the scenes, we're building up to be prepared.

It's no good going there. And like two weeks before, I'm thinking right now we're going to Australia. So for my point of view, it's how I'm going to use my skill set in those conditions, what I can do. You know, I'm not going to give you a cliched answer or a TV answer. I think you are always looking at the big moments, whether it's World Cups or Champions Trophies or Ashes. They're always in the back of your mind,

a big series of India, stuff like that. So, you know, we've been doing little things myself with Paul Colmwood on working on my batting for what I can expect in the ashes. Now, that was in India. So I'm not going to give you an answer that would be an interview answer. I'm going to say, yes, it's in the back of your mind. And yes, I'd love to be on that tour. Yeah, well, that's natural, isn't it really?

Because you do have to plan ahead, don't you? I mean and talk about it because it is a big deal isn't it is it is it does kind of drive what what we all do to an extent it is it is that ultimate so batting with collingwood there's a lot of stuff around your nose is it presumably well it's that sort of Australian back of a length stuff and obviously bounces and things are but mainly for me it's working around that sort of back of a length which is that hard constant length at the Australians vault hazelwood length yeah the top of the storms and trying to get better there for If I can keep them ones out, then the bouncer is something obviously that Australians do target the tail in Australia. It's natural, we know that's coming, so I'll be working on that as well. Luckily for me, I can dish a few of that out as well, so... It doesn't seem to bother them though, is it? It doesn't, but like I say, they're used to that condition, so, you know, we've got

to work out a way of us to get better in those conditions. They're used to it, they play it well. We talk about Australians being typically very good between sort of shoulder and hip area, the pull shop sort of chest area. So we've got to work out where best the ball at them and how we can get them out because they're used to that area so much. And of course

we're not, so we've got to get better at that area. They're winning matches, the captain's in great Nick, and they're getting those big first inning scores that are going to be key in Australia. But this is going to be one of the busiest years of English cricket ever. Sixteen test matches scheduled and with the T20

World Cup before the ashes. Not only that, but players are having to live bit themselves to bio-bubbles since last summer. And I'll be honest, they're not much fun. I think within it, there's going to be different challenges, as you say, mentioning bubbles and the schedule being as it is and the amount of games, we're going to have to be quite smart and shrewd with selections and resting players and making sure that the welfare of players is right at the forefront of every decision that we make. But if we balance that out well and guys throw everything into each game, then we will give ourselves the best possible chance.

everyone's brought into that and you know we've just got to make sure that we when we get opportunities to really drive games home we get loose and we see it through some of it's completely out of my hands it's really important that they get the opportunity to go and play and make sure they do everything they can to win that world cup it's really important that we put our strongest sides out as often as possible especially in major tournaments and of course the ashes is hugely important And it's a massive deal for me personally as captain, but so is a World Cup. England going and performing well in major tournaments. I'm desperate to see us go win that World Cup.

And it means that our best players will have to be there. But it will also mean probably that Australia's best players will be there as well. And they'll be facing similar challenges, similar problems. We can sit there, feel sorry for ourselves if there's an injury or two in that World Cup. But what we can do is make sure that we've got plenty of options. You've got guys that are ready and have proven themselves in test cricket that if guys aren't fit or are tired, they can come in and do what is required to win games of cricket in Australia.

England had a plan to look after their players. Those who play in all formats were going to be rested from various tests. Stokes, Butler, Archer, Wood and many more, sat out various parts of England's subcontinental tour. But it wasn't a popular policy, especially, when England started losing. Could you imagine Josh Butler had scored a double hundred in that first test match

or someone scores a double hundred and then goes home? Would it be the same case? You know, when England turn up to face Australia, will there be people resting? I don't think that they had a great opportunity going to India to really sort of stamp, you know, what they were about. You know, going to play the best side in the world

in their own backyard. You know what I mean? I think perhaps they should have thought to themselves, right well listen let's pick a test team let's pick a squad to stay there for the for the duration of the test sides make that clear to people you know are you on board with this you know because we're going to go there and we've got a great chance to really sort of like achieve something over in india and i think that they've just sort of like let this opportunity slip a little bit through their fingers we all know that people in bubbles and everything but then perhaps jos butler shouldn't have then gone to Sri Lanka and sort of like then committed to the four tests in india You know, and so there are so many different connotations now that it's almost like just a world pool of players and you're just sort of like picking people out and asking too much of them just to pop in and pop out.

It's not like a game of football when you, you know what I mean? You know, they're players of similar standards. The Joss Butler's of this world and these kind of people are the world-class players. So as you say, if they go into a test match against New Zealand without the Ben Stokes, without the Joss Butler, without these kind of guys, it's almost saying, well, you know, we're just, we're not playing our best side.

You know what I mean? It's a bit like the FA Cup. Well, we're not taking this seriously. And you've got to take, represent in your country at test match cricket as the pinnacle. You can't bob in and bob out of it. It's just a feeling of sort of like, oh, crikey. You know, England were one-nil up. They were on this pathway.

They'd won six tests out of six. They'd gone to India, smashed India in the first test match. And then it's sort of like very, very quickly all fell apart in the second test match. England lost the series 3-1 and their head coach Chris Silverwood was defensive of the policy when I caught up with him at the end of the series

You look at me about cricket that we've played in about cricket we've got in front of us we've got to be proactive in looking after our players and making sure that we keep them as fresh as possible so we can keep them going

as long as possible as well we talk about working as way to the ashes I want the squad to arrive there in fit form both physically and mentally to be honest because again that's going to be a tough toll we know of it and it's one that obviously we prioritising

so I want to make sure but everybody arrives at that point in as good a place as possible. So we have to look after our players. Can we just distinguish the difference between rotation and bubble fatigue and rest? There is clear difference between those two things. There is, but they're clearly linked as well. We do need to keep them fresh and firing because the test matches do come thick and fast in difficult conditions, especially here. But equally, to keep the players mentally fresh is very important as well

because you want them when they're out on the part, you want them to be concentrate on the cricket in front of them. You want them to be happy, you want to be settled. And sometimes that means seeing your family. And it's difficult, you know what I mean? And the families want to see, I mean, the dads, the husbands or whoever it is as well. You know what I mean? So I think that we've done it to the best of our ability. I think it's worked.

You know what I mean, it's certainly something we'll reflect on as well. Obviously, after this tour to make sure that we are getting things right, it's right, and we can learn from it. And obviously, try and do things as well as possible moving forward as well. The going home seems to be therefore more family-driven. Is that right than bubble life? because I'd imagine that life in the Indian hotels on this trip once you'd done your quarantine

wouldn't actually have been that much different, and I'm guessing, because they're not there, he'd have to tell me, but wouldn't actually, I don't think have been that much different to a normal tour of that part of the world, would it? I mean, you don't go wandering down the high street to find a restaurant to eat in the evenings in Amdabad. It is very hotel driven.

So it was more an opportunity for family life rather than bubble fatigue, if you like. In my eyes, one is handing down with the other. But one thing that we haven't got here is a choice to better go out. You know, I mean, in days gone by, you may have chosen not to go out, but at the moment, we haven't got a choice. And we are stuck in the hotel, between a hotel and the ground. Everybody misses their family.

The families miss the players that are here. And I think it's important. But when there's no family time, and there's no, I mean, we can't get the families to the players as we normally would. I think it's important that we do our very best to get the players back to the family and use that as the family time. Given that it is 3-1, I just wonder realistically, how much damage, if that's the right word,

or how much jolting off course, realistically, this series has done for your preparations, as you said, for that key series in Australia coming up. I mean, does it actually, will it alter anything? It won't alter our outlook on what we're trying to achieve. Now, again, it'll just go down to an experience and help galvanise the side, really. We've got some fine young players in that side,

crawledgy, sybilogy, Pope, obviously Lawrence. And I think the experience and seeing these conditions and playing in different parts of the world, hoping with Stephen Rieber was in Australia and help us win the ashes there. Fast forward several months. It's now November. It's the day before the first load of England players

are about to fly to the ashes. Mo Bobat, the man who was so instrumental in setting up the rest and rotation policy, still stands by it. When we started planning for this two or three year cycle, the volume of cricket that we play, relative to other teams as well, there's a significant difference.

You know, in the last year or two, we've literally played twice as much cricket as the likes of Australia and New Zealand. Twice as much is no exaggeration. We probably played a third more than India as well. You know, we're way out there in terms of the amount of cricket we've played. And actually, if you just think of the COVID-era and international sport, I don't think there's an international sports team that's done as much as we've done. What you need to be able to do probably is to, we've always said that you need to beat the schedule as well as beating your opposition. That's the reality of what we're faced with at the minute.

So when you're trying to design a strategy for how you do that, I think good strategy is about prioritisation. So you have to start up by making some difficult decisions and having some difficult conversations around where must we be at our best? It's a bit like British cycling saying they're going to prioritise the Olympics and not spending too much energy on the World Championships. They do that and they turn up at the Olympics and they deliver. And for us going into this year, we've got two Olympic games. One was the World Cup and one was the ashes is the reality of it. So you have to make some difficult decisions. Now, I must stress that that doesn't mean we don't want to win in these other games and these series.

And it doesn't mean that we want to devalue any of that. Far from it, you know, some of the accusations that got leveled at us as we were devaluing test cricket because of resting and rotating, we're doing the total opposite. We're trying to make sure that when we want to win our test matches, we're thriving and we're ready to go. And we realize that's challenging. But just even recently, hearing some of the Indian players response to their World Cup experience at the minute, It was only the other day I heard Jaspery Bumra talk about the fact that needing a break, needing to spend time with your family, being on the road for six months,

fatigue and bubble fatigue. Now, when I heard a lot of that, clearly you feel and empathise for him as a cricketer who's going through that and some of the team. But I thought to myself, it made me feel glad and grateful that we made some of those difficult decisions around someone like Joss, who's currently thriving at the World Cup. And Tamir is on his way to the last ball of the innings, and he goes and bowls to but low. That must have gone, surely. Over deep square leg, four six, and for Butler's 100, from 67 balls, a brilliant innings.

He spent a good time with his family. We made some tough calls around some of the cricket that he plays. Well, maybe that's the return on investment that we're getting. And so what do I think of the policy aggers? I think it's exactly the right thing that we had to do if we wanted to give ourselves the best chance of achieving our competitive aims, which was the World Cup in the Ashes. It doesn't guarantee success, but I think we can at least look at it and go it gives us the best chance of making sure that our playing assets are fresh and ready to go.

Do you get input from the players? I mean, is that a way of getting the players involved in it? You know, to try and explain to the fast bowlers, listen, lad, this is actually, you may not think so. And this may be your 63rd cap or something that you're actually going to miss out. But in the end, it's the right thing. Absolutely that. And that is a really important point, I guess,

that, you know, we periodically sit down and do performance kind of reviews or appraisals with the players. And typically, they'd involve myself, Ash, Chris, And in the past, Ed Smith, who would have been, obviously, National Select for the time. And that's exactly the conversation that we have, Agers. And, you know, we put the schedule in front of someone like Joss and say, look, Joss, you're going to have to see your family at some stage. What does that look like?

Same question for whether that's Jimmy, Jimmy Anderson or Stuart Broad. Like, they're the types of questions we need to ask them and get their input in. And, you know, in most cases, we arrive at a similar conclusion and what that program might look like. So, yeah, totally, they must have a say in that. and they must be able to contribute to that decision-making, definitely. Was it a difficult thing to sell to the public as well? I mean, there are times, I've been critical at times where people have paid 120 quid to go and see a one-day game

and they've been looking forward to it for ages for their mate and two or three of the main players aren't there and they feel, okay, I mean, a lot of people take it other way. They say, well, we'll see some new players and so on. I'm thinking in terms of how it was explained, I mean, there was that bit of a mix-up with Moeen, for instance, wasn't there, when he went back? So did that all make the sort of rest of rotation

and difficult thing to sell to the likes of, well, like me and the public, and people listen to me. In many ways, it is a hard sell. First and foremost, I guess I'm an England cricket fan. And I want to see every time we take the field, we feel like we've got what is our strongest team. But you come back to that phrase, well, what is your strongest team

within the context of everything you're trying to achieve? That's the bit that I suppose you hope that people understand and appreciate that your strongest team is relative to your opposition, the conditions that you're facing, form and fitness, and also what we're trying to win over the course of six months or a year, I don't think you can simply just look at it in that really simple way of well, our strongest 11 today,

because the schedule won't enable us to win what we need to win. It just simply won't. So, you know, could we have explained that differently or better, maybe? But I think ultimately, there's always challenges and you don't get everything right, but I think the intent is definitely something that I would stand by. You've also got to look at in the winter, you know, We've had periods where we've got concurrent series going on. You physically can't pick your strongest team.

Now, even this winter alone, we will, during the fifth Ashes test, we're playing whiteball cricket in the West Indies. We can't physically can't pick our strongest team or what would be deemed our strongest team by anybody, you know, because the multi-format players will have to make some decisions about where they are. So it isn't as straightforward as that. So I don't think Reston Rotation has stopped,

and I'd prefer it to call it play. player management. What we're trying to do is manage our players individually and collectively so that we look after their best interests as well as looking after England's cricket, England cricket's best interests. We're going to get some of that right and some of that wrong, I think, I guess. You promised me that the test players are still playing the Ashes and not playing one day in the West Indies, aren't you? I'm pretty sure I can say what we'll be prioritising at that stage. And it's easy to forget. It's not just the players that have been rested. We've had to do the same with staff. I've got a team of coaches,

and support staff, or which analyst is going on, which bit of it and for how long, which strength and conditioning coach, which physio. Like, working out and mapping out my coach program, that, you know, that was exactly the same as what we had to do with the players. And the coaches are the same. Like, I've got coaches who wish they were at the World Cup, but they're coming out to the ashes, and they can't do both. Look, I understand where Mo Bobat comes from to juggle all of these formats and the players

and try to keep them fresh, but I just never really thought rest and rotation would work. players selection is key. It maintains team morale. You have to have faith in that selection process. And each cap is precious. Why let someone else take your place and then pretend to be happy about it? And then there's the fans too, paying top dollar to come along and see the best players in action, or at least that's what they expect. Anyway, we've looked at the detail of all the planning that goes into an Australian tour. But in the year leading up to an ashes, things don't always. go to plan. I want to make it clear that I'm not racist and I'm not sexist. I deep regret my actions

and I'm ashamed of making such a mark. And then I remember getting a text message at about 8 o'clock from Ashley Giles saying we need to get on a call at 9.

More than anything I just want my friend to be okay. That's next time on Project Ashes. Match of the Day Top 10 podcast. Gary Linneker here to bring you a little message.

Match of the day, Top 10 podcast is back once again. exclusively on BBC Sounds. It's too late for me now, man, I don't know, yeah, it's too late. I thought I was going to get some more dates on a match of the day then. Yes, myself, Alan, and the busiest man in football punditry, Micah Richards, return for series five.

He was never going to Man City. Maniated could never, ever have allowed Cristiano Ronaldo to have gone to Manchester City. The Match of the Day Top 10 podcast, only available on BBC Sounds.