England are set to appoint Kieron Pollard as a consultant coach for the Twenty20 World Cup.
Pollard, who is 36 and remains an active player, has enjoyed an extraordinary T20 career, winning five Indian Premier League titles and the 2012 T20 World Cup. He is the most experienced player in T20 history, playing 637 matches in the format and is renowned as one of the shrewdest thinkers in the game.
Pollard also brings intimate knowledge of conditions in West Indies. The Trinidadian will help England to assess the pitches in the T20 World Cup, which begins on June 4. He will play a similar role to Mike Hussey, the former Australian batsman, in the 2022 T20 World Cup victory.
During England’s torrid ODI World Cup defence in India, the team did not bring in a local expert. Rob Key, the managing director, later blamed himself for not appointing such a figure, highlighting the decision to bowl first in Mumbai against South Africa when England conceded 399.
“I hold myself accountable for a lot of it really,” Key said last month. “I’ve set up a coaching team that had no local experience, really. Actually someone who knows these conditions really well says, ‘By the way, it’s hotter than the sun out there; make sure you have a bat’. We got so caught up in what was going to happen five or six hours down the line.”
The appointment will allow Pollard to reunite with his former team-mate and England captain Jos Buttler. In 2010 and 2011, Pollard played alongside Buttler for Somerset. Buttler later shared a dressing room with Pollard at Mumbai Indians and has spoken about how West Indies’ approach to T20 has shaped his own method.
“I heard a few guys talk about it like, ‘There’s eight overs left, if we hit five sixes in that time, we’ll win the game’,” Buttler has said. “It’s just a different way of thinking.”
Pollard has been seen in the team hotel in Trinidad in recent days as England played the final two matches of their five-game T20 series against West Indies, which they lost 3-2.
While Pollard is still playing in some T20 leagues, he retired from the Indian Premier League before the 2023 tournament to become batting coach for Mumbai Indians. At the franchise he also worked alongside Jofra Archer.
Pollard’s involvement with England is initially expected to be just for the T20 World Cup. But if the partnership proves fruitful, he might yet be enlisted to work with the side again in the future.
England’s build-up to World Cup will be dominated by a familiar question
A successful tour of the Caribbean for England? To Buttler, the answer was yes.
“I think so,” the captain declared before the flight home from Trinidad & Tobago. “We all wanted to win the series and it’s hard to say that when you’ve lost, but I think we’ve found out some good things.
“Some players have stood up and done really well. We’ve obviously had five games out here in the Caribbean and had a really good look at what conditions will be like for the World Cup only six months away. So yeah, it’s been a good series.”
On one level, Buttler’s logic is hard to fault. Simply being in the Caribbean should help England when they return here in six months; so will Pollard signing on as consultant coach.
Dropping Ben Duckett after one game and elevating Liam Livingstone to No 4 hinted at England adapting to the demands of T20 in the Caribbean. For all the divergence in conditions during a fascinating five-game series, one trend held true: in all five games, the side to score the most sixes won. England cleared the ropes 56 times in the series.
An outstanding opening partnership, between Buttler and Alex Hales, underpinned England winning the T20 World Cup last year. Now, England might have an even more effective opening pair: Buttler and Phil Salt added consecutive century partnerships. On both occasions, Salt made hundreds. While still attacking in the Powerplay without inhibition, Salt has developed greater range afterwards.
But while England improved markedly over the final three games, they still leave the Caribbean after losing both white-ball series: a 2-1 loss in the ODIs and a 3-2 defeat in the T20Is. The T20 squad is, as head coach Matthew Mott said, “very close” to the group that will return here in June.
West Indies are a fine side in this format, especially at home: this was their third consecutive series win, after beating South Africa and India earlier this year. But, in the T20 series, England confronted them with an experienced squad. England’s side in the two games in Trinidad included 10 players with IPL experience, and eight men who played in the T20 World Cup final victory last year.
There remains uncertainty over how England can assemble a side to defend their trophy. Will Jacks is a batsman of abundant promise, but only averaged 14.6 in the T20s. Ben Stokes and potentially also Jonny Bairstow are poised to return to the T20 side in June.
Sam Curran, player of the tournament in the 2022 T20 World Cup, has endured a chastening year; he conceded 11.9 an over in the series, bowling barely two overs per match. Besides Reece Topley, England’s best white-ball bowler this winter, the other seamers struggled too, especially at the death. For all the excitement about pairing two leg spinners together, Rehan Ahmed did not match his feats in the ODI series.
And so England’s build-up to the T20 World Cup will be dominated by a familiar question: will Jofra Archer be fit?
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