Brendon McCullum excited for Ashes challenge and defends England’s preparations

Brendon McCullum is embracing Ashes fever as England’s head coach insisted he is satisfied with having just one warm-up before facing Australia.

England are intent on winning back the urn for the first time in a decade, while they have not won in Australia since 2010/11, thrashed on their last three visits by scores of 5-0 once and 4-0 twice.

While England have white-ball series against Ireland and New Zealand before their tour Down Under, McCullum is already in planning mode for his side’s next Test series, starting on November 21 in Perth.

“It’s going to be a huge series and we go down there with the type of team that we want,” he said. “We’ll give ourselves every chance against the very, very good Australian side in their own conditions.

“We try to do our best to insulate the environment on good days and bad from a lot of that noise and we know the noise is going to be extreme, but it doesn’t mean we’re not excited about that.

“Now the Ashes is our next assignment in the Test team, we can’t wait. It’s going to be awesome. Ramp it up now, we’re ready to go.”

McCullum flies back to his native New Zealand on Monday night, handing over control of a weakened T20 side to assistant Marcus Trescothick for three matches against Ireland in Malahide this week.

England, though, are set to finalise their Ashes squad in the next week, with the identity of a back-up spinner to Shoaib Bashir expected to be the only conundrum for McCullum and captain Ben Stokes.

There could be as many as seven seamers on the flight over although Andrew Flintoff’s England Lions will be in Australia at the same time to supplement the main group and provide injury cover.

England’s only official practice match will be a three-day affair against the Lions, which has invited scrutiny, but McCullum pointed to his record in his time as coach as reason for optimism.

“If someone gave me a perfect preparation and said ‘if you follow this you’re going to win 5-0, well, we’ll do it’,” McCullum said.

“But that doesn’t exist, so you’ve got to have conviction in how you think you can prepare guys and the team in itself.

“And I think over the last three years since I’ve been here, we’ve won every first Test of every Test series away, following the exact preparation we’re going to follow.

“It doesn’t guarantee us anything, but it’s the familiarity with that preparation which gives us a chance.”

The preceding T20 and ODI series in New Zealand, with less than a fortnight between that tour ending and their Lions warm-up in Perth, could therefore form part of the Ashes preparation.

“There is a chance we may bring one or two others in to be able to make sure that we get their final bits of their preparation and the cherry ripe before Australia,” McCullum added.

“But we will also use the Lions set up as well to sure we get some loading into some guys when we all meet together in Perth. We’ll finish our preparation with our warm-up game and look forward to it.”