Are England too nice? They think so – and this is how they're changing it
And pace bowler Brydon Carse has explicitly linked this abrasive approach to how England want to battle Australia for the Ashes here, where England have not won a Test match since 2011, the last time they retained the urn away from home.
After a spiteful Lord's Test where players on both sides lost their cool on several occasions, Brook said that coach Brendon McCullum – who has employed his friend and former New Zealand psychologist Gilbert Enoka to help motivate the England players – told the team before the game that they were 'too nice' to opponents.
When Indian captain Shubman Gill harried the England openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett as they tried to avoid another over being bowled on the third evening, Brook used the episode as a pretext to initiate a sledging barrage for the remainder of the match, which England went on to win narrowly.
''Baz' actually said a few days before the Test that we are too nice sometimes and I brought it up the night before the last day – I said, 'I think tomorrow is a perfect opportunity to really get stuck into them,'' Brook said before the fourth Test in Manchester. England lead India 2-1 with two Tests to play.
'We had a little conversation the night before, where everybody saw them guys get stuck into 'Creeps' and 'Ducky' [Crawley and Duckett] and we just thought, 'We're not having that'. We all piled into them.
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'I've had a lot of compliments. Everybody says it was awesome to watch and it looked like there was 11 versus two out there when we were fielding and it was good fun. It made fielding a lot more enjoyable.'
Carse, who bowled a fiery spell to set England on the path to winning at Lord's while defending a small fourth innings target, said that expectations of a difficult Ashes assignment had the players thinking about making sure they were similarly aggressive in Australia.
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