ECB managing director Rob Key on culture of 'Bazball', England central contracts & selection policy

hello Nas hello hello Rob key how are you I'm very well Ward are you good well I will be in just a second if you just give me a moment but you have selected differently you know Mike Lam was talking on the podcast with nass the other day about the end of season picking for winter tours glass of red County averages in one hand you're not seeing it that way example Josh Hull coming in not into the side but into the squad just explain and reiterate your philosophy well I think you sort of have your style really the way that you want to go out and play which isn't about just going out as you like you know just playing shots and you got to change the way you do it all of that you know you want batters as I sort of feel like I'm like a broken record you want batters who can put good Bowlers under pressure and that means can you put bumra Shamy Cummins people like that under pressure and you don't always see that in county cricket so that's the Judgment you have to make who who has the talent and ability to do that and you're taking a bit of a flyer on that in some ways then you want bow uh batters as well who can soak it up so you need both of those games and some batters when I speak to them and they say well how do I get in you say well you're very good at soaking up the pressure not so good at putting the pressure on and that's what you have to develop um and then the same thing with Bowlers you know you want Bowlers that generally we want a varied attack we you know you'd love to have four Mart Woods or jofer archers but that's not the reality but what you want is people that generally can operate above sort of around 84 and above because that generally is what the best Bowlers do or if you're not that you've got to have a huge amount of skill someone like what Chris wokes has had Jimmy Anderson at the latter part because Jimmy for a bit of it and broady were quicker than the 80 mph stuff and then you're looking at you know like that variation and you're looking at where people are now and where they're going to be so it's not always about well when you speak to people you say well what's he like and they go well he does this he does that we're not quite sure you say yeah but where can he be what's the upside to them and you always always I think or we think you want to select with optimism you know we lack optimism at times in this country we're always seeing the danger always seeing the trouble always seeing what people can't do you want to think about if this goes well how good can they be do you look at the county averages at all yeah we do but it doesn't take long to do that you know like but there's lots of different ways you can do it I believe a lot said we all believe a lot in Impact really how much you impact games of cricket you know so are you the person say someone like Ben Stokes whose averages wouldn't be you know he's not averaging 50 with the bat and 21 with the ball but there's no question he impacts every single game just by being there so you're trying to work out who's impacting games of cricket who's impacting it when it's tough who's the guy doing the overs when it's not when nothing's happening so you're always trying to make judgments on that and we look at lots of different things you find out about the character of these individuals who do you speak to because one thing having the ability for the thing with Jamie Smith he's got the ability one thing that struck all of us is how ready he is for test match cricket nothing at the moment seems to phas him so how do you find out about the character of individuals two ways mainly you obviously there's a lot of very trusted people in county cricket the directors of Cricket the coaches people like that so someone like Stewie's you know obviously big on someone like Jamie Smith like he is all of his players but there's always things people give things away when they don't mean to almost it's the little things they say think oh that's interesting and then I tell you what's become really important for us is Lions Cricket so we see county cricket is producing so much talent and then we have the odd lies game in the winter as well so I went away a couple of years ago that's where we saw Jamie Smith all of a sudden you just see well he's better than others and then Josh Tong you're watching him you know Josh Tong averaging whatever is in county cricket he's bowling in Sri Lanka and you know like you go well he's better than everyone else you know it's pretty simple decision and the same thing with SH Basher you know Stokes he famously puts on our WhatsApp group and then you just look and you're like wow this kids got sumon and the thing about the clips is what you see is you see someone at their best when you watch the highlight when you watch young players and you just see a 40 50c clip you don't see the rubbish you just see their potential you see the upside and you trade on that and the environment that is being created by Ben and baz talk about the upside a lot but let's talk about the the downside guys that fall by the ways side because they get overlooked a lot of the time early on it was guys like Alex Le ran ahed has been in and out there've been various Spinners and seamers what's the support system like for those guys is it the line or is it an alternative it's different for different people but I think that's the the best point about that really is that selectors or people involved in selecting so the captain coach Luke Wright myself you can look like you're clever because the environment's so good and that's the absolute key to everything it doesn't really matter you know you can have really good selections but if they go into an environment that's stifling then it doesn't work you know it's what he did with that white buol team you know look at selections are fine but actually it's the environment that him bis and those guys created that allows players to thrive so that's the most important thing for all my Waffle beforehand that's the most important now I'll answer your question is actually that you know then you need so someone like Ryan armed is a long-term bet some of those guys then not you know they're not different slightly to Alex Le who it's a bit more like you're slightly more established you've got to go and find that style that we want really which he's done well in county cricket um so everyone's different you've got someone like Ryan armid by no you know he we'll be looking at him for Pakistan same with someone like Tom Harley you're looking at times for the conditions that they're going to play in you got a few long-term bets that you're thinking you know three or four years time someone like Josh har don't expect the finished article you know you just see potential there and you're putting them on that Journey now you think they got the talent and you're trying to get them to learn in international cricket Bob Willis would have done it years ago you know Bob came in he just bowled quick he came in early and if you get the right bet where you think they've got the ability and talent they can adapt quickly explain that specific selection because then we can actually get our head round the way you think you've got Josh Hall who's averaging 62 In First Class Cricket or you could go Sam Cook who's got 295 wickets at 19 over a seven-year period firstly how do you go we're going to go with that one and secondly do you explain to the other lad Sam Cook you're getting him at 19s but we've gone for someone who's getting him at 62 Sam Cook's someone I've spoken to I haven't spoken to him about the Josh Hall one because you're not also looking at who's the best bowler and then it's a list from down onwards you're looking at the position they're going to fill in the game so someone like Chris wokes for example he's in that now someone like Sam Cook is in that Chris wokes mall where they're slightly slower but they're hugely skilled so his competition is Chris wokes it's not Mark Wood so when Mark Wood come goes out the team then you're looking for someone right okay who's not exactly light for light cuz he's obviously left arm and Tall who's going to add that part of our attack and you're look at everyone else so when you're looking at like at the moment that number seven number eight role the batting becomes important so it's like okay so Bri and car comes into that because Bri and car is someone who can go out there and he can fill in that number eight role as well as bow so you're not just looking at okay best bowler here then a list down you're looking at the role that you want them to fulfill in terms of central contracts so we bring up the list of central contracts that you announced when we were out in India for that World Cup if you look at Josh HS we've been talking about into the Test match Squad doesn't have a central contract look at the white ball teams you selected and some of these guys that You' put on long-term deals are not there how difficult was it to come up with that list at the time and to put it bluntly do you think you sort of jumped the gun a bit and confetti it a little bit because a lot of these guys are not going to be involved you know D Milan announced his retirement recently he's on a central contract Jimmy Anderson retired he's on a central contract Sam Cara not in the ODI squads he's on a long-term Central contract did you have to do it so quickly did you have to give so many away yeah but you got to remember that there's a lot of myths about Central contracts really for a start they're not all on the same price there's lot it's no one really is on the same amount it changes and your value to the ECB is very different so Ben Stokes and Ryan armed aren't on the same level by any stretch it goes from a decent amount right down to just a little bit more than county cricket and some of those bets are long-term bets like the Ryan armed some of the younger Bowlers and you're often putting Bowlers on there so they serve lots of different purposes County contracts you're also got it's not a daily rate it's not about the days of gone where a central contract is a daily rate where we go right you're doing this because we think you're going to play this amount of games a lot of the time you're trying to keep hold of your talent as well you've also got other things like every new broadcast cycle there's aand brand new negotiation with t and it's not a bad playing t for those T is a team England player partnership so they're the players representatives and it's like a group negotiation thing and so they're always you know quite rightly going to try and get as much money for the players as you can we're going to try and pay them as much as we possibly can but having three qus of your staff on or of your best players on a contract ain't the worst place to be but you need to be flexible with them all the time so you just got to see them in lots of different ways and you know you're not going to get them all right there times but I'll always maintain someone like joffer Archer who hasn't played for a couple of years but has been on a good Central contract I don't regret that in any stretch because if the bet is right and he comes good and if he doesn't well that's one of those things but I'll always have taken that bet so the the control element to the contracts the multi-year deals is a huge positive but when you look at the broader scheme of cricket landscape when do you actually pull your weight with players because players are getting gaps and going here there and everywhere we're seeing with test side at the moment so when when does that moment happen yeah well it happens sort of often I think this year we pulled a load of people out the I which didn't make me the most popular person with India and stuff like that and that was because we had a World Cup coming up you know we're looking at all the time you negociate a lot of my job now I have people from franchises ringing up when can you have this player so there's a lot of players where we put in place now when we offer them this time around it will be like right this is your winter because the one thing that we can trade off because actually we pay our players less especially the top ones than they can get in franchise Cricket but the one thing we can offer is that security so you look at someone like New Zealand because there' be some of those players in New Zealand we go you know oh you get paid much more than a New Zealand cricketer not all of them you know and some of their best players are now turning down Central contracts that's not a position we want to be so I don't regret any of it we can finesse it of course and there's always going to be people that you know you end up looking at think well they're getting a lot of money for not doing much well but that's the bet you have sometimes you know contracts like that all around the world happen you know it's like you boys you boys are on decent deals here I'd imagine you're doing less criet than you ever have done how do you how do you balance a reward for loyalty and reward for performance and also keeping crigers hungry or do you just think everyone on that list will stay hungry from what you see if you give two threeyear deals then I'm not saying they will come but they could Coast how do you keep them hungry you could just give them a onee contract and keep them hungry like that and that's the balance yeah that's the that's where it is tough because you're trying to work out like who are those characters and you don't get them all right is the honest truth but you work out what the bet is and a lot of the time you know if you're a bowler that's where the risk is so there'll be some of our guys especially the Batters in test Cricket because the schedule when you look from next year from the New Year the schedule's nowhere near what it has been for the last two years you haven't got the clashes the problem will actually be more about resting players you haven't got the the Test match finishing like we have in Pakistan and two days later a white ball series it's a bit more it's a better schedule really um so look I've I've waffled so much I've forgotten your question was keeping them hungry keeping the cricket you know I think but that that is part of that and it's not easy to do but it goes back to more you know what the great leaders have done is they've created an environment that people are desperate to play and then you have a time like we done where it's very relaxed and you want everyone to go out there and express themselves and they have a bit of golf and you have a bit of time off all we ask in return is that you commit and I don't care if you're on a central contract if you're not committed to what we're doing so if you're not someone who's training as hard as you possibly can putting everything in and committing to the way that we want to do things then you're gone just very quickly specifically on white ball Cricket you brought some new life in in bethl and Mosley into this squad uh the youngest players the previous two World Cup finals schv M Gillan I think it was Marco Jansen at 24 and 25 what is the Target now for the white ball team with this new blood coming through well the white bu team's had it tough I'll try and answer it quickly because every the next series has always been a World Cup now we got the Champions Trophy but we feel like there's a bit of time now where it's been the end of an era where a great team has just gone like that and you're trying to bring them in so it's Champions Trophy but really for 50 over you're looking at that World Cup in what 27 we appreciate take your time thank you very much just to let you know Sky don't hand out threeyear contracts willy-nilly they hand out some bad ones got four they hand out some bad contracts but they don't hand them some of you out of date as well you know you're gone