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England’s white-ball coach, Matthew Mott, has the
“full backing” of Rob Key to stay in that role despite their
elimination from the World Cup in India in the group stage.
Following England’s 93-run victory against Pakistan in
Kolkata on Saturday, which solidified a seventh-place finish and a spot in the
2025 Champions Trophy, Mott indicated his wish to stay in the position.
“If anything, I’m more determined than ever,” he stated.
Key, the managing director of England, stated early on
Sunday that Key supports Mott to the hilt before the T20 World Cup in 2019. Key
took full responsibility for England’s failings, blaming them on his decision
to put their Test team first.
“Coaching is pretty simple: you’re judged by your
results, but you’re also judged by the way that your players go out and play
and they haven’t done that at all,” Key told the BBC. “Matthew would
be the first one to say that.
“But I find it a funny position to be in where
I’m blaming Matthew Mott for this when in many conversations I’ve had to say,
‘sorry, you’re not going to have your best team – you’re not going to have Joe
Root, Ben Stokes, all of these people because the Test team’s going to.’
“So the first time it goes wrong, I’m not going
to sit here and go, ‘actually, right, you should have done this, you should
have done that.’ We’ll have some pretty honest conversations, as you do in
these things and say, ‘right, what you’re going to do to improve this?’ But as
far as I’m concerned he gets my full backing and an opportunity to try and turn
it around.”
Key said that it was hard for him to criticise either
Mott or Jos Buttler, who will retain his position as captain, since his own
decisions had undermined their ability to drive England’s ODI team forward
since their appointments at the start of last summer.
“It’s very hard for me to be critical of Jos
Buttler and Matthew Mott when I’m the one who, every single time the decision
has been made for whether or not we focus on 50-over cricket, Test cricket or
T20, I’ve always chosen Test cricket,” Key said.
“Every single time, I’ve been the one. So I hold
myself accountable really, more so than anyone else, for what’s gone wrong on
this. There’s plenty of things we’d do differently which we’ve got to try and
do.”