Harry Brook is obviously going to replace Jos Buttler as ODI captain – but do England need a third leader for T20s?

5 minute read

If you want some idea of the future direction of the England one-day international (ODI) team, then look to the futuristic year of 2024 when Australia came over. That’s when Harry Brook was in charge. Sure, England lost 3-2, but he did a decent enough job and if anything the added responsibility aided his batting. Brook will almost certainly get the job. But should he also be named T20 captain?

England have, in recent times, divided the various format captaincies on the basis of ball colour. One skipper for red (and pink), another for white.

This breakdown stems from twin beliefs:

1. Leading in all three formats would be ruinous
2. The 50-over game has more in common with its uppity limited-overs sibling than its staid bigger brother

The first of those is probably true. England play (and travel) heaps. More on this (a nine-minute read, no less) here.

The second point felt true when things were going well and the team was exploring the limits of its batting ambitions, but it feels less true now. The fact that scoring rates have increased so much in the Test team means that picking long format batters doesn’t necessarily slow the 50-over side significantly and a few more of them might even temper some of the flighty risk-taking that has tended to result in rapid but fundamentally useless 20-odds in recent times.

As much as the term gets thrown around these days, ‘white ball cricket’ isn’t truly a distinct thing because middle format staff are drawn from both of the other formats. This means you don’t necessarily need your 20-over and 50-over teams to have the same captain.

Why does this matter?

Because Harry Brook is at grave risk of being international-cricketed into very early retirement. He’s only been around for a couple of years and he’s already closing in on 100 international caps. That’s an unsustainable level of headwear accumulation – particularly if he’s also going to be captain in two-thirds of those matches.

Realistically, Brook is going to sit out a lot of limited overs series. Test matches he’ll tend to play because – and this is a pretty key point here – he’s highly likely to be doing a good bit of captaining there as well before too long. Quite possibly during the Ashes, if not before.

Say what now?

Oh, come on. It was only in March that Ben Stokes returned to full all-roundering and by August a hamstring was twanging him out of both bowling and batting. A bit of rehab, another return, and in December he was twanged out again.

Last we heard he was shuffling his way through rehab as if he was trying on some of that tethered footwear at Wynsor’s World of Shoes. We’re sure he’ll be back. But for how long? And if there is another twanging, are we quite confident Ollie Pope and his famed ‘leadership potential’ will still be in the team to step into the skippering breach? He seems to have lost a bit of status in the Test team in recent times.

Our view is that if Harry Brook is a fully fledged England captain in another format and a Stokes body part goes pop, we’re pretty confident the Yorkshireman would be put in charge.

The lay of the land

Brook has to play Test matches and there’s much to be gained from having him lead the 50-over side too (not least, experience). We suppose you could go the other way and have him play only the longest and shortest formats – same as Stokes did – but then you’d have to find a different ODI captain and it’s not obvious who that would be.

Phil Salt and Liam Livingstone have also led England in recent times, but we’re pretty sure both will be binned from the 50-over squad for being flighty cameo merchants. Those sorts of contributions are useful in T20s, where either man could still be put in charge. They’re not so good in ODIs, unless all the other batters are really reliable (which obviously they aren’t).

Another person who’s led the England 50-over side is Zak Crawley, but he hasn’t played the format since 2023 and can’t really put forward any kind of case for doing so again at the minute.

We’re talking in circles a bit here. Suffice to say it’s hard to identify an alternative to Brook as ODI captain, but there are probably a few other options for T20s if you’re wary of overburdening him (and you should be).

Three captains is a lot

We’ve been here before, in 2011, when Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook and Stuart Broad were given a format each. For various reasons, that arrangement wasn’t successful.

If you’re really averse to three captains and want someone to cover both white ball formats, we suppose you could go with Salt or Livingstone. That feels like a bit of a gamble though with regards to being worth a place in the 50-over side though and you’d probably want to introduce a bit more batting ballast elsewhere to accommodate whichever of them you went with.

The other way of looking at is to ask how long that three leader setup would realistically last? By the time the next white ball tournament – the T20 World Cup – comes around in March next year, India’s Test team will have been and gone and the Ashes will be over. Obviously Ben Stokes will tell you he’s going to play forever, but equally obviously Ben Stokes is probably going to knock Test captaincy on the head after those two engagements are ticked off.

That’s if his body doesn’t compel him to do so before then. Brendon McCullum doesn’t like to look too far ahead, but sometimes you find yourself pawing at a touchscreen or talking to a robot and realise you’re in the future already. If England are picking their next white ball captain, they’d do well to factor in who their current Test captain might already be.

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