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You can find a fascinating masterclass segment with the England coach alongside Rob Key. Shot during 2016, it captures the pair in a state of youthful vigour, laughing during a session while talking about T20 batting.

The dynamic between them feels overpowering. It’s almost like watching a private moment. It embodies pure McCullum’s mindset: a focus on entering a clear head as the primary goal.

“I try to hit it in that direction, sometimes over there,” he says with a shrug. When asked about his quick hands, he replies: “I’m not entirely sure.”

This is not great revelation to learn that a McCullum tutorial lacks complex technical content. The insight comes from hearing a supremely talented player articulate an approach built on keeping things simple. McCullum concedes his red-ball approach was transferable because “at the highest level I lacked a defensive game capable of withstanding top-class attacks.”

The Central Dilemma: Can a ‘Vibe’ Coach Manage a Major Campaign?

This raises a crucial question: Should you entrust this same instinctive thinker with planning, coach, and meticulously managing a gruelling Test series in Australia? Furthermore, what if this approach subsequently falters because of slack planning? Should you then task him to try again, to adapt a methodology centred around paring it back?

At this point, McCullum has begun to feel like a corporate motivational speaker whose simple mantra has been applied to running a national sports team. He can be a valuable inspirational figure is clear. But that doesn’t mean he is equipped to run all the corporate accounting.

The Case for Accountability

For this reason, McCullum must now be held to account under standard measures of success and failure, whatever the outcome in Sydney. One could make an argument that each side might benefit structurally from losing this final Test.

Yet, it would be an error to get distracted by any late-series victory. The fundamental failures remain. The primary job for the leadership was to oversee the environment and handle the logistics. You do not reward a failure of planning simply because the talent on the field were good enough to claw it back later on.

Maintaining perspective will be difficult if the team avoid defeat in Sydney. Many distractions are present. The host nation's response to losing at the MCG was misleadingly overblown, from criticism of the pitch to essays about the death of warrior culture. This is highly distractingly feelgood for English supporters.

Avoid the Distractions

• Do not be misled because the fourth Test was an excellent victory despite the pitch furore.
• Don’t look away with the imminent T20 World Cup, a competition that seems to appear all too regularly.
• Do not lose sight of the fact replacing the management does not address the chronic structural problems within English cricket.

In fact, the final point is key. The appointment of convincing amateurs to the highest roles; the tolerance of a casual approach, jobs for the boys, and spinning poor decisions: this is symptomatic of much that is flawed in cricket.

The Precedent of Poor Preparation

This is why consequences must exist. What message does it set should it emerge you can get away with skipping proper warm-up games, going without a dedicated fielding coach, or not organising a pink-ball practice for players who have never seen a pink ball?

Consider also all the fine detail, right down to the strange treatment of Shoaib Bashir, who was replaced by a part-time all-rounder. If such oversights are ignored, it implies that standards are meaningless.

Prior to Sydney, attempts to rewrite history has begun. Some suggest that it was fine to skip practice games because the team has done so before and were victorious. This logic conveniently ignores critical context, such as past opponents were also underprepared, while the hosts were fully prepared. Just because you passed one exam without revising does not mean you should never study.

The Path Forward and Stokes’s Key Role

The primary case for retaining the current regime centres on lessons can be learned from these mistakes. The notion that the coach could add a grasp of detail to his inspirationalism remains unproven. His entire method is simplification. What would ‘Baz’ with data briefings even function?

The captain becomes pivotal. His mid-series comments felt like urgent effort to inject some substance behind the team’s loose philosophy. He will be asked to deliver his own tour review. A clear, unvarnished assessment could well leave McCullum in serious trouble, and the director required to own up to managerial failure.

The final Test presents an opportunity to win again. Yet this must not be permitted to obscure these facts. There is a need for accountability, for stakes, and for rigorous scrutiny on performance. This is Test cricket that still matters.