‘England should go for Trott – Buttler needs a strong foil’

Where many England coaches before him would have bitten your arm off to get to a T20 World Cup semi-final, Matthew Mott is having to walk away from a job he took in 2022 with the vision of keeping a good thing going.

It should be remembered that Mott won the T20 World Cup in 2022. That feels like a long time ago after the 12 months this white-ball team have just endured.

Even though they reached the last four of the T20 World Cup in June and were only beaten by eventual champions India, it is hard to argue that England are playing with the same dominance or authority of the team Mott inherited.

The Australian is a victim of the success and standards set by his predecessors, and a period of under-performance has led to managing director Rob Key to act.

This isn’t just Mott’s mess. It would be grossly unfair to put all of the blame on his shoulders. Many people within the England set-up have to take responsibility for allowing the decline of the white-ball team.

Unfortunately for Mott, change is the best way to move on and forget the nightmare of the past year.

Some will ask why Mott has had to make way, rather than captain Jos Buttler.

Buttler is England’s greatest white-ball player of all time, with a cricketing brain that reads situations second to none. There is a reason why Eoin Morgan had Buttler as his most trusted voice and, in my opinion, he is the correct person to lead this team.

Now, England need a clean slate for Buttler and the new coach to refresh the team.

Marcus Trescothick will be in temporary charge for the series against Australia in September, but after that there is only a tour of West Indies in November before a new year when England go to India to tune up for the Champions Trophy in Pakistan in late February.

As a captain, you want absolute clarity and simplicity when making decisions. It could be about selection, what to do at the toss or tactical changes during a match. A good place for Buttler to start would be to trust his intuition.

I worry that the England dressing-room was being drowned in too many voices. Buttler and Mott, both keen to learn and take the opinions of others, may have suffered from a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth in the Caribbean.

Along with the regular leadership team, England added big personalities – Andrew Flintoff and Kieron Pollard – to the staff. Analyst Freddie Wilde provided statistics and match-ups, and senior players would have offered their opinions.

All of that noise on top of a captain and coach constantly searching for their best team was a recipe for disaster. If the rain hadn’t relented in Antigua for England to beat Namibia and scrape through the group by the skin of their teeth, this decision could have come a good few weeks ago.

From my playing experience, the best coach-captain combinations are often slightly different characters and play different roles within the dressing room.

Andrew Strauss was authoritative yet thoughtful, Andy Flower intimidating and strong. As captain and coach respectively, they won the Ashes in Australia and made England the best Test team in the world.

Morgan and Trevor Bayliss were the men to deliver the 50-over World Cup in 2019. Morgan was a strong-minded leader with the vision, while Bayliss wouldn’t speak to the group unless it was absolutely necessary. When he did speak, you knew he meant it.

I wonder whether one strong voice would be the best foil for Buttler. It is the captain who will have to decide about the path he wants this team to follow, and the coach will have to fit that vision. It’s the only way it can work.

My pick for the role would be Jonathan Trott, who has made remarkable gains for Afghanistan.

The former England batter has a forceful personality, can be necessarily prickly at the right times and has played cricket recently enough to understand the modern game. Trott is well respected but not so revered that his presence would undermine the captain.

One thing to remember is Mott has rarely had his best team available to him. This was a crucial part of England’s build-up to the 2019 World Cup. The team was so familiar with each other that it was almost second nature when they walked out to the middle.

In contrast, Mott and Buttler have pretty much only had their best team available in world tournaments.

The new coach’s first conversation will be to try to make sure their favoured players are available more often. How likely that is with white-ball series crammed between Tests for the remainder of this year, then red-ball series at home to India and away to Australia next year, is a matter for debate.

Once the new management know who will be available to them, they can decide on a core of players to take the team forward and the level of commitment required to make a success of this reboot.

There is so much exciting young talent in this country. If those players can be blended with a simple gameplan, it will not be too long before England are seriously competing for white-ball world titles once more.