England head coach Brendon McCullum said his team “trained too much” in the build-up to their heavy defeat in the second Ashes Test in Brisbane on Sunday. England’s preparation for the series has been questioned, especially their decision to play three days of intra-squad warm-up cricket at Lilac Hill on a pitch that did not match the conditions at the Perth Stadium.After the first Test ended in two days, England did not send any players to the pink-ball Prime Minister’s XI match in Canberra. They had not played a day/night Test since early 2023, and three players in the current XI had never played one before. Among them was wicketkeeper Jamie Smith, who dropped an important catch. England instead went to Brisbane and trained for five days, adding two extra practice sessions.
England went 2-0 down in the five-match series after another heavy loss to Australia at the Gabba on Sunday.“If anything, we trained too much,” McCullum said in two separate interviews to 7cricket and BBC. “We had five to 10 training sessions leading into this game.”“That’s something as a coach you have to be aware of. Sometimes there is a tendency to overdo things to make up for it,” he said to BBC.McCullum also said, “As we all know, in this game it is played in the top two inches. We all have to find way that we ensure that we feel prepared physically, technically and we are ready for the battle, but also to make sure we are fresh and make sure we can make those decisions in the heat of the games.”“We will have a beer tonight. I think leading into this Test match I actually felt like we overprepared to be honest,” McCullum told 7Cricket.He acknowledged England’s struggle to adjust to conditions after Australia bowled them out for 241 in their second innings of the day-night Test. “We have got some work to do. We have some time. We have been here before and there is no point feeling sorry for yourself. You pick yourself up and you go again,” he said.“We weren’t at our best. To beat Australia in Australia, you have to be at your best across all three disciplines and we weren’t. That is brutal honesty and we will wear that. From our point of view, we know we have to be better. We have to be a lot quicker to adapt to the conditions in Adelaide. I thought we were a bit slow to adapt to the conditions here.”
