Join the Miguel Delaney team: Inside Football Join the Miguel Delaney Inside newsletter to get exclusive access and unparalleled insight. Football Join the Miguel Delaney Inside newsletter Football newsletterEngland head coach Brendon McCullum is ready to roll out an unchanged batting lineup for this week’s crunch Ashes Test in Adelaide, insisting he will not be swayed by questions over his future.At 2-0 down with three to play, England know they cannot afford another slip-up but are set to give their error-prone top seven another chance.Ollie Pope, who averages 18.71 in 14 innings against Australia with a top score of 46, looked most vulnerable to a challenge from Jacob Bethell but McCullum spoke strongly in favour of retaining the status quo.Pope duly took his place in the catching cordon as England returned to practice for the first time since losing in Brisbane a week ago, indicating that he would hold the spot.Asked if there would be changes in the batting group after some costly collapses, McCullum said: “I wouldn’t have thought so. Knee-jerk reactions and chopping and changing settled batting line-ups is not really our way.“We know we haven’t got enough runs so far in this series but for us to go on and win this series, it’s not about throwing out what has been successful for us over the last few years. It’s about having more conviction.“It’s about making sure we have our plans and our disciplines around it just screwed down a touch more. Making sure when we walk out there we have utter belief in what we are capable of achieving.”Defeat in South Australia would end England’s hopes of reclaiming the urn in brutally premature fashion, the kind of result that turns up the heat on those in charge.McCullum was unmoved by the suggestion that his job could be on the line in the coming weeks and claimed insulating himself from scrutiny was not a motivating factor in decisions.“I don’t know, but it doesn’t really bother me to be honest,” he said.“Professional sport, it’s not easy and you do the job to the best of your ability. I certainly don’t coach to protect the job. I coach to get the best out of people and that’s the same with the skipper.“We both go about that in our same way with the same level of conviction and that won’t be changing this week just because the prize is at its highest. I believe we can win the Test match if we give it our all. If we can do that then the…
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2025-12-14 06:46:08
