English cricket meets Spinal Tap as Rob Key delivers latest Ashes autopsy | Ashes 2025-26

“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” David St Hubbins, lead vocalist Spinal Tap.

“There’s a real difference between aggressive and dumb.” Rob Key, managing director, England cricket.

Listening to Rob Key deliver the latest four-yearly Ashes autopsy deep in the grey concrete underworld of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, it was tempting at first to conclude that what we have here is a basic category mistake.

A pundit is punditing his own mistakes. A fluent, interesting broadcaster is offering fluent, interesting observations about the collapse of an England tour that he, the fluent, interesting broadcaster, oversaw. And concluding, you know what, I probably did OK in the end.

So maybe this is the thing. The ECB has mistakenly hired a broadcaster. It has confused cause and effect, presentation and delivery. The Honey Monster has been put in charge of global puffed rice production.

Except, after an hour of mild filler laced with the odd hidden mea culpa, this had begun to feel more like sensible planning. England’s prep for this tour has been all about horses for courses. Bashir for Adelaide. Wood for Perth. Here we had another specialist selection: Key for the basement defeat-explainer. In Rob Key the ECB hired the perfect person to explain the mistakes of Rob Key. This was his moment to execute.

Ideally another Rob Key could now be wheeled out to pontificate on Rob Key pontificating on Rob Key. A further layer, Rob Key cubed, could produce a clippable podcast segment on the Rob key evisceration of Rob Key on Rob Key. And we can just drill endlessly upwards, away from the detail not towards it, into a place where nobody has to answer any real questions or carry anything resembling a can. Or at least, not yet anyway.

If Key did occasionally sound a bit like the members of Spinal Tap attempting to process their own disastrous arena tour of America, then this is also fine. It’s part of the role, like a football manager, sport’s ultimate patsy, there to draw the ire of the crowd away from those in real authority.

“I don’t want to talk about the structure,” he said at one point, refusing to address anything to do with the nuts and bolts of the system he manages and directs. Understandably so. The structure appoints engaging amateurs to its highest posts. The structure hires Rob Key to explain Rob Key. This is the structure right here in front of you.

With this in mind it was in many ways a very polished bumbling performance, pitched as a classic fish out of water comedy, the nice reasonable man out of his depth. There were some obvious evasions. Key spent a lot of time talking in the passive voice about bad choices and failings of process, as though this was all actually someone else’s area.

There was some whaddaya gonna do over the fact the New Zealand white-ball tour didn’t turn out to to be ideal prep for an Ashes series, and that the lone warm-up game didn’t actually replicate conditions in Perth.

There was also a great deal of prevarication, a jazz odyssey of almost-statements. In an hour spent trying to explain the collapse of England’s exuberantly confident Test match machine at first contact with Australia, the managing director said 131 you knows, 76 I thinks, 20 probably/maybes, 17 coulds and mights, and four I don’t knows. Chuck in a three-minute fire drill in the middle and what were you left with?

“Everything that I’ve heard so far, I was told that they sat down, had lunch, had dinner, didn’t go out late, had the odd drink, and I don’t mind that.”

“Have a good time – all the time.” Viv Savage, drummer, Spinal Tap.

Most obviously Key came across as seriously under-briefed on the Noosa interlude, something that is entirely in keeping with a set-up so light on details. You can take a view on whether it actually matters if cricketers have a few beers on a mid-series break. But we are where we are, and a different kind of administrator would have spent the previous six hours getting right across this, diving head first into every detail of a story that will now dog the actual story.

Instead Key made the tactical mistake of saying that he will definitely look into it. This then becomes England Investigate Noosa Trip, another headline, another beat in the story, more smoke even if there is no more fire (and there may well be some of that). It is unfair in many ways. Key is a non-drinker. He made it clear he doesn’t think athletes should be boozing. So … How did they … Who decided that … Who exactly is the daddy here? More slackness. More winging it. In the end it will come sweating out through the pores.

“I thought Brendon was right talking about over-preparing. I’m not sure over-preparing was the right term. We just did the same thing over and over again.”

“For every one single thing that goes wrong, a hundred things go right.” Ian Faith, tour manager Spinal Tap.

There was resolute backing for Brendon McCullum. Key was adamant McCullum can’t be held responsible for players seeming ill-prepared for the conditions. He maintained that only paying attention to the “top two inches” is enough on the most exacting mission any of these players will undertake.

What does this mean? Key hired and empowered McCullum. Are we finding out that the two come and go as a pair? Does unflinching support mean they grow ever harder and costlier to sack? More simply, the highs and lows of the last two exciting years will be Key’s legacy in whatever comes next. Best to take a line now and hold it.

“I still think that’s right. I think [Michael] Neser gave us a lesson in how to run in and slam the wicket hard. You know, they’re hitting the bat hard. They might be 82-83mph on the speed gun. But they’re hitting the bat harder than that.”

“We’ve got armadillos in our trousers. I mean, it’s really quite frightening. And they run screaming.” David St Hubbins, lead singer Spinal Tap.

Key was most defiant on the question of whether he was right to say there was no place for medium-paced bowling in the Ashes, the need to junk all that county powder puff stuff, a statement that was extracted and cut next to Neser and Scott Boland bowling England out with Alex Carey up to the stumps.

He pointed out that what he actually said was 75mph bowling, the floatier stuff you do see in the championship. He made the point Neser and Boland are actually, well, terrifying when they do this: pitch-hitting, glove-pounding, crease-attacking demons.

It was telling in two ways. Key was across the detail here. He had scrolled Insta and X. He’s online. He’s a media man. And to be fair it would have made a good segment. Rattled Key hits back. MD lashes haters. He may not know when it rains in New Zealand. But he does know this stuff.

“I looked at the huddle first day at Lord’s and you look around and there’s 38 people.”

“Hundreds of years before the dawn of history lived an ancient race of people. The Druids. No one knows who they were. Or what they were doing.” Stonehenge, Spinal Tap.

There were questions about the scarcity of specialist skills coaches on tour. Key pointed out that stripping back and taking away the noise was consistent with the project. He also admitted England were probably a bit too stripped back in the end. And buried in the filibuster, peeping out like rabbits in the treeline, there were some genuine admissions of fault.

“Have we got the most out of the players that we’ve got? And there’s no question for me. I don’t think we have.” “Did we give them the best chance to succeed in Perth? The players we had, we haven’t helped them get to their best, and that’s on us as a set-up.” There was also perspective, too much perspective perhaps, from someone who knows both how “bloody tough” Ashes cricket can be and how “bloody good” this Australian team is.

In the end none of this is really Key’s doing. He is here to broadcast, to embody the limits of the system that appointed him, a non-details man supported by another non-details man, to manage a highly detailed performance environment, and then thought that would be enough.

It is also wrong to suggest Key doesn’t care about county cricket. He does, however, know its failings, and clearly feels disempowered to do anything about them. He talked about “valuing cricketers that had been undervalued for a while”. “There is talent in our game, and our job as an England men’s setup is to bring that in and make sure it can develop.”

By the end the thought occurred that Rob Key would perhaps be the ideal person to conduct the inevitable review into Rob Key’s England. Not so much on detail or solutions or critiquing the system, but themes and thoughts, interestingly expressed. Join us again after the four-year break. Same basement. Similar script.