News about Brendon McCullum

RICHARD GIBSON: The process of selecting England's squad for next year's Ashes began this week, using the ECB's ground-breaking £500,000-a-year camera technology. Headed by performance analysis lead Stafford Murray, the boffins based at Loughborough will use their vast pool of data, in conjunction with expert input from the likes of England coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes, to produce a photofit of what a winning Test team in Australian conditions looks like. They will then find the players from within the English game whose individual characteristics most closely replicate the required mould.

LAWRENCE BOOTH: When Jon Lewis, head coach of England's women, revealed recently that team analysts had used artificial intelligence to inform selection for last summer's Ashes, it sounded like another nail in the coffin for the traditional talent scout, armed with binoculars, notepad and gut instinct. But the use of software run by the London-based firm PSi to simulate 250,000 match-game permutations is just part of an ongoing revolution in the way cricket coaches and selectors make their decisions. Lewis, who concluded that off-spinner Charlie Dean should come into the T20 side - a move that played a role in England's stirring comeback against Australia - was only too happy to let the boffins do their work.

DAVID LLOYD: Jimmy Anderson deserved to be treated better than this. The end comes to us all in the sporting sphere, but his career was on a level that should have resulted in a departure on his own terms. At the age of 41, it was indisputable that his playing days were dwindling. But following the talks that took place recently with England coach Brendon McCullum on his future, our Jimmy should have been allowed to announce the news himself. His career, his standing in the game and his personality merited that opportunity. Not only has Anderson been a shining light in cricket and carried the Test attack alongside Stuart Broad for 15 years, he has also been a great ambassador for sport in our country.

Jimmy Anderson  will bring the curtain down on his illustrious Test career at the fitting setting of Lord's this summer after conceding that making the next Ashes was too much of a stretch. Upon becoming only the third player in Test history to take 700 Test wickets on the tour of India earlier this year, Anderson refused to rule out one last skirmish with the Australians before hanging his boots. However, he told the BBC's Tailenders podcast yesterday that the 2025-26 series Down Under was removed as a target during an April meeting with England coach Brendon McCullum. 'We have appraisals every six months and my future was something that has been talked about - I feel like I have talked about it for 10 years with every coach I have had asking: "How long you going to play for?". And it was just looking ahead: could a 43-year-old me make the Ashes in 18 months' time and sort of coming to the decision, probably not,' Anderson said.

RICHARD GIBSON: James Anderson has revealed that England's first Test of the summer will be his last. Anderson confirmed the match against West Indies at Lord's in July, three weeks shy of his 42nd birthday, will represent his farewell to an international career stretching back to 2002. 'It's been an incredible 20 years representing my country, playing the game I've loved since I was a kid. I'm going to miss walking out for England so much,' he posted on his social media channels.

LAWRENCE BOOTH: It says everything about the esteem in which Jimmy Anderson is held that Brendon McCullum took a round trip of over 20,000 miles to tell him his Test career was nearing its end. The news was inevitable, perhaps: Anderson turns 42 in July, taking him well past the normal sell-by date for an international fast bowler. Even so, it comes as a shock. Turn on the TV during any England Test in the 21st century, and the chances were Anderson was swinging the new ball this way and that, scowling as he went about his work but secretly loving every minute. He will be impossible to replace. Sentiment, though, cannot cloud the logic. For all the frisson caused by Ben Stokes 's Bazballers, England's Test team are still judged by whether they hold the Ashes urn - and since 2017-18 it has belonged to Australia . McCullum's contract as head coach ends after the trip Down Under in 2025-26, and he wants to hit Australia with pace. With the best will in the world, Anderson does not fit the bill.

LAWRENCE BOOTH AND RICHARD GIBSON: Anderson (left), who picked up his 700th Test wicket in India in March, will be 43 by the time England travel to Australia in 2025-26 in a bid to win the Ashes for the first time in over a decade - leaving the management keen to reconfigure their seam attack well in advance. England play six Tests this summer - three each against West Indies and Sri Lanka - and it is understood McCullum flew to the UK recently from his home in New Zealand to personally tell Anderson about his plans over a round of golf.

England's Harry Brook and Mark Wood are honoured while Bazball is celebrated in the latest edition of the cricketing bible. Brook and Wood are named as two of the five cricketers of the year along with Australians Usman Khawaja and Mitchell Starc and Ashleigh Gardner from their all-conquering women's team in the 161st Wisden Almanack, published on Tuesday. And Mail Sport's own Lawrence Booth lauds England's audacious approach to Test cricket under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum in his brilliant editor's notes that are such an important annual statement on the health of the world game.

NATHAN SALT: Nathan Lyon has denied the suggestion that his arrival in Lancashire would stunt Tom Hartley's growth, insisting that the pair will work in tandem throughout the Aussie's time in Manchester. Lyon is expected to make his Red Rose debut against Surrey on Friday in what would be one of seven games he is eligible to play under Cricket Australia's instruction. Hartley, who delivered a match-winning second-innings haul of seven for 62 on Test debut in Hyderabad, is excited to play with Lyon, but England coach Brendon McCullum has expressed worry that his young spinners could be marginalized to accommodate Lyon's likes.

Exclusive INTERVIEW BY PAUL NEWMAN Shoaib Bashir discusses the time he was plucked from nowhere to bowl for England at some of the best players of spin in world cricket. The Bashir tale is a thrilling one. Why England turned into a rookie for one of the most difficult Test cricket assignments, released by Surrey at 17 years old and beginning his first tentative steps with Somerset. England's series in India may have resulted in a 4-1 loss, but the decision to cast three spinners - Bashir, Tom Hartley, and Rehan Ahmed - with no senior experience into the deep end and seeing them all swim was a triumph for the team. Bashir, who had played just six Championship games and taken ten expensive wickets before England picked him based on Ben Stokes' hunch, emerged as the most promising of the lot.

DHARAMSHALA is a republic in the United States. Brendon McCullum admits that England was defeated at their own game by a hard-hitting India team, but acknowledges that he will have to rethink his approach as he begins his tenure as coach that will come to an end with the next Ashes. McCullum had a 4-1 thrashing, followed by an innings and 64 runs for India in the final Test within three days, leaving him with a lot to consider as he begins to plan what would almost certainly be the second and final stage of his time with England. McCullum was keen to recall that this was his first series loss to himself and Ben Stokes, but that it was still a bad enough setback for reforms to be made in both approach and personnel, beginning against West Indies and Sri Lanka this summer.

My mum was there in person, but she was also standing next to Jimmy's dad Michael in the stands, and she sent me snapshots of the two of them doing superstitious cricket activities like swapping seats or going for walks for good fortune in the name of getting him to that 700. We all know that it means absolutely nothing, but we still do it. It's a spectacular achievement, but not one that I can recall from another fast bowler versus another. When people talk about Jimmy, they generally emphasize that they have the dedication and the mental strength to keep going forward, and, of course, there are times when you can't play in the wrong climate, but we should really marvel at his talent, because that is what it has taken to get so many wickets under different conditions, challenging the best batters in the world for more than 20 years.

PAUL NEWMAN IN DHARAMSHALA: It was a typical show of resistance by the England captain, but Stokes will undoubtedly know that a fourth successive loss would cause serious concerns regarding his relationship with Brendon McCullum. England hasn't won a Test series for 15 months after those heady days in Pakistan, and the recent disaster that saw them bowled out for 195 in response to India's 477 has left eight of their last 12 matches unbeaten.

PAUL NEWMAN IN DHARAMSHALA: If Ben Stokes writes his own scripts, it is fair to assume that he will not have England staring down the barrel in another traumatic loss after just two days in a dream setting. However, even the England captain could not have penned his spectacular but, let's face it, futile entrance with the ball in an otherwise predictable tale of Indian domination that will surely come to a 4-1 thumping any time soon. Stokes has been downplaying his chances of returning to his all-round role after recovering from knee pains late last year even though he has been steadily stepping up his bowling in practice.

PAUL NEWMAN: Tom Hartley believes that his emergence as a red-ball spinner of genuine class in India will earn him a spot in Lancashire early in the season, alongside the club's big overseas signing Nathan Lyon. Brendon McCullum wants counties to support England by selecting the spinners who have made their names on this tour, saying it would be "mad" for them to ignore Hartley and Somerset's Shoaib Bashir. And Hartley, the leading wicket taker on either side of 20 victims, believes he can both learn from the Australian and also assist him by playing with him at Old Trafford in early season seam friendly weather.

NEWMAN: Ollie Pope began this series with one of the best Test innings in the history, but he's in danger of ending it just as if he hits a run. They are extremes of form, with England's next captain in waiting still having a lot to prove in Dharamshala this week. In the first Test comeback victory, Pope Francis made a stunning 196, full of Bazball audacity but also textbook orthodoxy, and it seemed he had finally put out any doubts about his octagon as Stokes eventual successor. But, three Tests later, and with a three-ball pair in Ranchi behind him, Pope's quest for a score is one of the many sub-plots that make England's visit to the Himalayan foothills anything but a dead-rubber.

PAUL NEWMAN IN RANCHI: Brendon McCullum has begged for counties to have opportunities for the young spinners making their names for themselves in India this summer, and says it will be "mad" not to choose them. In the first four Tests, England robbed Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir from virtual anonymity to face world-class spinners here and then compared them to India's top slow bowlers, who took 32 wickets between them. Now the England coach wants Lancashire and Somerset, as well as Leicestershire in the case of Rehan Ahmed, to continue their successes here by extending their involvement in the early County Championship games in April and May.

NASSER HUSSAIN: There's no shame in losing in India, who have now won 17 home series in a row. And this is no time to rule out Bazball, which has produced exciting cricket for the past 18 months and still has a lot of credit in the bank, despite a first series loss to Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum. England has made it clear that they want to ban out the external noise, and that is fair enough: there aren't many better voices to listen to than Stokes and McCullum. However, there is another voice that is vital to any athlete, and that's your own, the little girl on the shoulder who tells you how to get better.

With a five-wicket victory in Ranchi, England succumbered to their first Test series loss under captain Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum's leadership. India went from 177 for seven in response to 353 to hold the first-innings deficit to 46, then England went from 110 for three to 145, with the hosts having no way to prevent 192. After the Test in Ranchi, Mail Sport's Lawrence Booth assigns a score to each of the England players.

Only days after calling for it to be scrapped, England captain Ben Stokes was rescued by an umpire's call on the Decision Review System. During the third Test against India last week, Stokes was enraged by a controversial DRS call which went against opener Zak Crawley. After umpire Kumar Dharamasena's decision to suspend Crawley out, DRS upheld him, despite pictures revealing that the ball will skip the top of leg-stump.

After suffering an injury during their Test series in India, England spinner Jack Leach will have surgery on his left knee. When Leach sustained an injury in the field that caused his knee to swell, he was participating in his first Test series since missing the Ashes. Leach, who completed the first Test but missed the second, was sent home from England's Abu Dhabi camp, where they were taking their mid-season break.

PAUL NEWMAN IN RANCHI: Bashir was four for 84, hardly surprising to be the best figures of his fledgling career, as India struggled to deal with the uneven bounce and turn England's newcomer extracted from the cracked surface from his height of 6ft 4in. And with the imposing prospect of batting last, Hartley, who was postponed by Stokes' introduction until the 32nd century, is now 134 behind and facing the perplexing prospect of batting last.

PAUL MAN IN RANCHI: Joe Root went back to the tactics that had helped him so much before the Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum revolution, earning him a priceless 106. How England wanted Root to apprehend the extravagance that had cost them so dear in Rajkot. The new Root has a time and a place, but the customers need the old one and he gave them the opportunity to keep them in this Test and the series.

The fourth test, which begins tomorrow, is a must-win for the tourists if England has a chance to be victorious in a test series in India for the first time since 2012-13. Since they are now 5/2 outsiders with Sky Bet to win in Ranchi, Brendon McCullum's team will have to defy the bookies' odds if they want to level the series 2-2. On the other hand, India is an odds-on favorite at 4/9 to reign supreme and wrap up the series, while a draw is the most popular in the market at 9/1. In addition to the head-to-head odds listed above, Sky Bet has three 'Price Boosts' on offer.