A part of us was afraid of what we would find, hundreds of miles down a road that snaked through the World Cup like a main circuit cable. But we went all the same, down walkways and stairwells, past the light and the noise (and the stadium dog), through rooms into other rooms, and finally into a place of revelation, the heart of England’s World Cup darkness.
Inside that final room there is a table. And on the table is a board covered in adverts. And sat in front of that board of adverts is Carl Hopkinson. The horror ... the horror. Also: the fielding coach.
This was not a press conference. It was an execution. Or at least Carl Hopkinson would probably call it something like that on the evidence of an afternoon when the impromptu public face of England’s defeated world champions used the phrase “execute our skills” not once, or twice, but nine times during two very brief media interviews.
This was something deeply routine, a series of unremarkable questions posed by the host and travelling press at the England team’s first public appearance since exiting the World Cup in the most wretched, invertebrate fashion.
Nobody saw any of this coming. But there are always clues. This was another one, a day when England’s management decided the perfect person to address the failure of a champion team, to explain the unravelling of an era that has enriched the careers of every player and administrator involved, that has touched those who love and support the game at home, was an assistant coach who had never previously given a press conference.
Frankly, Hopkinson deserves a bonus, several rounds of drinks and heartfelt thanks for fronting when no one else would. But this was also a farcical piece of public relations, contemptuous of the process, and an act of disdain aimed presumably at a very supportive cricket media (try losing like this in football); and beyond that towards a doggedly loyal wider cricketing public, also known as viewers and readers.
Does any of this matter? Can a routine pre-match press conference ever really have any meaning? In this case: yes. This was that rare thing, a presser that mattered, that came with a debt to pay and some comfort to be offered. And above all with the need to tend to the most vital relationship in cricket.
Player fees for this World Cup will come to more than £100,000 on top of the usual salary. This is not magic money. It comes from TV subscriptions, tickets and sponsor engagement. On or off the pitch, it should at least come with a sense of being earned. Instead England have slunk out of this tournament in stealth mode, just as they entered it under-prepared, carrying injured players, in thrall to their own star power and primed to crumble at the first wave of pressure.
Indifference can be catching. Back home that staged collapse has gone increasingly below the radar, a cautionary note for a sport that is already close to becoming a niche pursuit. The collapse of this team feels systemic, evidence of a malaise that goes far beyond a group of players stretched thin by the treadmill.
It really shouldn’t be Carl Hopkinson’s job to explain this. But it made for an agreeably surreal afternoon in Pune as Hopkinson took his seat, a generic cricket-style man, shades on top of his cap, looking a little frazzled in the lights.
No, he didn’t know about the team, because the man who did hadn’t told him yet. No he didn’t know if Ben Stokes would be going home. Probably not. At one point Hopkinson was asked why he was actually here, why he had been deemed the ideal person to explain the startling collapse of England’s World Cup winners. “I’m not quite sure why I’m the man to explain,” was the reply, perhaps a wry homage to Roy Hodgson’s ‘I don’t know why I’m here’ after Iceland 2016, but something that everyone in the room could at least agree on.
Otherwise, it was basically all about the execution. For the record this is an abridged version of the only public explanation offered by England’s coaching regime for arguably the most stunning collapse of any champion team: “It’s about executing under pressure. I think, again, it’s about executing. It’s more around actual skill execution. We haven’t executed as well as we could have done. I think I’ve said it three or four times now: execution under pressure.”
Asked how you actually go about improving your execution, Hopkinson did have an answer. “It comes from lots of things,” he said, leaning in, the sense of some vital revelation in the air. “It comes from, first of all, winning games of cricket.” There you have it, a piece of perfect circular logic, spinning on its axis, so fragile that just as you think you can see it, it disappears from view. You win games by execution. And you learn execution by winning games.
English cricket is always threatening to end, to simply fade into the ether, consumed by the noise outside. Perhaps this is what lies behind the door of that final room. Perhaps this is death. A man in a cap in front of a board of adverts talking about execution while nobody takes notes that nobody will write up, that nobody will read and that nobody needs. Behold: your Executioner.
Does any of this actually matter? Actually, yes. England’s head coach, Matthew Mott, should have been present. Mott is yet to speak in public since this World Cup defence ended. He seems agreeable and competent. The Executioner described him as “relaxed”. And who could disagree, because who really knows? Cricket coaches have far less influence than football managers. But the total absence from view is strange, evidence of a life lived inside a bubble within a bubble.
Again this feels like a conversation in a room where the walls are closing in. For a while there was a sense the arrival of the Rob Key-era leadership tier, the cricket bros – good blokes, ex-pros, inexperienced administrators who are good on TV – was a way of reaching out and modernising. But mates, and mates of mates, and the veneration of celebrity (who was ever going to tell Ben Stokes turning up underdone and injured might be a bad idea?) carries its own collateral damage.
It is telling that we see contracts for players publicly announced midway through a World Cup, that nobody knew about the champions Trophy, that an ageing team has collapsed together, and that the fielding coach is doing a key presser because no one is able to say, actually, that’s bad messaging, bad optics, and frankly a little amateurish.
Key will arrive in India later this week for a survey of the remaining parts and some kind of reckoning up. Hopefully he has a little more to give than this.
