"Speak a lot of rubbish a lot of the time" - Robert Key's massive statement on England players after dismal 2025 Champions Trophy campaign
England managing director Robert Key has slammed the players for shooting themselves in the foot with their comments in interviews and press conferences after the side's dismal 2025 Champions Trophy campaign. Despite massive disappointments in the ODI format since the 2023 World Cup, few players, notably Ben Duckett during the India series before the Champions Trophy, dismissed concerns about the side.
However, England again succumbed to expectations, losing all three games to finish at the bottom of Group B and be eliminated pre-semifinal. Jos Buttler's Men suffered a similar fate in the 2023 ODI World Cup, where they were knocked out in the first round.
Talking about the side in an interview with Sky Sports, Key said (via Hindustan Times):
"I have no issue with the way our guys go about things. But there's no doubt that we've got to get better when we're doing interviews, when players are doing their post-match press conferences, we speak a lot of rubbish a lot of the time. They're trying so hard to not sort of upset players in the dressing room, not try and give away something that they don't think they should, and then they end up creating headlines through that."
He added:
"There's not a world in where we think the players don't care, that they don't want to go and get big scores, that they don't care about winning, that they're arrogant. That's absolutely not true. Half the time when they're getting themselves into trouble it's because they're actually trying to concentrate so hard that they end up making mistakes."
Furthermore, England suffered four consecutive bilateral ODI series losses between the two first-round exits in the 2023 ODI World Cup and the ongoing Champions Trophy.
The string of poor results led to Jos Buttler stepping down from white-ball captaincy, announcing the same before England's final game of the Champions Trophy against South Africa.
"When I saw the team in Pakistan, they practised hard" - Robert Key
In the same interview, Robert Key dismissed remarks from former players and reports questioning the side's training during the recent ODI series in India. Former England batter Kevin Pietersen was particularly brutal in his assessment of the players' lack of training and practice sessions.
"A lot gets made of the way they go about things and the way they spend their time when they're not playing, which I have no issue with. When I saw the team in Pakistan, they practised hard. They got stuck in; it wasn't that they weren't practising which was why we didn't perform," said Key.
England will next play a one-off home Test against Zimbabwe at the end of May before the ODI and T20I series against the West Indies at home.