As England built their world champion 50-over team in the years leading up to 2019, white-ball – and, in particular, 50-over – cricket was the priority.
A year out from an away Ashes series, seen by many as the culmination of the Bazball journey the red-ball side have gone on under McCullum and Ben Stokes, that is not the case now.
As a result, one of McCullum’s biggest challenges will be getting his best XI on the field in white-ball games – or even getting enough time with the players at his disposal to assess what his best XI actually is.
It should come as no surprise that England’s white-ball results have dropped off at the same time as they have so regularly had to do without their Test stars.
Joe Root, for example, has played just 28 ODIs in more than five years since the 2019 World Cup. In the 18 months prior to that tournament he played 35.
The Yorkshireman was one of a number of Test players absent from the tour of the Caribbean, alongside Harry Brook, Ben Duckett, Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson to name but a few.
Then there is Ben Stokes: hero in England’s two most recent World Cup finals.
He’s not played a limited-overs match for England since the 2023 World Cup but has said he will return to the fold if asked by McCullum.
At 33, he remains a match-winner with the bat at least – his last ODI wicket came in March 2021 – but given he is less than a year on from surgery on his knee and his importance as leader of the Test side, do England want to add to his workload?
“The skipper and I haven’t spoken, but I’m assuming he’s all in. He seems like that sort of bloke,” McCullum said in September, perhaps hinting at the answer to that question.
“He loves big moments and big stages.”
Given that Duckett, Root, Brook, Stokes and Smith could quite conceivably make up five of England’s top seven in 50-over cricket, McCullum’s job of balancing rest for his Test players with playing time to establish roles within his white-ball side could be nigh-on impossible.
A slightly more forgiving schedule in 2025 compared to previous years will help but, regardless, it seems likely that allowances will have to be made when it comes to three-format players such as Brook or, potentially, Jofra Archer.
