England have made a mess of their succession planning after ignoring white-ball cricket since 2019
Andrew Miller07-Apr-20255:06
Roller: Managing all three formats will be Brook’s biggest challenge
The devil was in the detail of Rob Key’s statement, after the ECB confirmed the inevitable elevation of Harry Brook to England’s vacant white-ball captaincy.”This opportunity has come slightly earlier than expected,” Key said in his second sentence of the board’s press release – which is hardly the sort of glowing appraisal that you might expect from the England Men’s managing director on Coronation Day.And though Key did add that Brook had long been part of the team’s “succession planning” – whatever that may mean – his tone betrayed the shocking tangle that England have got themselves into in their once-formidable white-ball set-up.As recently as November 2022, that white-ball squad was still a genuinely groundbreaking outfit, with England’s victory in the T20 World Cup in Australia making them the first men’s team to hold both of the ICC’s white-ball trophies concurrently. Earlier that year in 50-over cricket, they extended their ODI record total to a massive, and still unsurpassed, 498 for 4 against the Netherlands at Amstelveen.Since then, however, the rot has been rapid and entirely foreseeable. Leaving their T20I fortunes to one side for a moment, the specific ineptitude of their recent Champions Trophy campaign reflected a generation of players – Brook included – who simply do not play enough 50-over cricket to know how to pace an innings.Prior to his England ODI debut against South Africa in January 2023, Brook hadn’t played a single 50-over match for Yorkshire since May 2019, two months before the team that he now leads had even broken their duck at the 50-over World Cup.His situation is mirrored by pretty much any player around whom England might hope to reinflate their white-ball fortunes – Jamie Smith, Jordan Cox, Gus Atkinson … the list goes on. And so, when Key says that his elevation has come sooner than would be ideal, it’s an admission of desperation, as much as an acknowledgment of how badly the Buttler-McCullum alliance failed to live up to expectations.For when it comes to “succession planning” … pull the other one. England have been on a wing and a prayer for the past two years in white-ball cricket. England’s preparations for the 2023 World Cup amounted to a séance, as the spirit of 2019 was summoned for one last dance (and duly failed to materialise), while the mere fact that Ben Stokes was seriously considered as a stop-gap is proof of how rapidly those standards are continuing to swirl around the plug-hole.Jos Buttler’s tenure disintegrated after the early high of the 2022 T20 World Cup•Sameer Ali/Getty ImagesIn terms of his career progression, it probably is too soon for Brook, but what’s a team to do? In an ideal world, he would have built up his 50-over experience over the next two and a half years until the 2027 World Cup, then taken over from Buttler with standards restored and legacies polished. In an ideal world, he would have had a few more chances to shore up his technique against high-quality spin: a genuine problem area, though clearly not an insurmountable one, even if his two-year ban from the IPL after his late withdrawal from Delhi Capitals’ campaign will deny him an obvious source of experience.In an ideal world, Brook would also be averaging more than 28.50 in his T20I career. In part this is a legacy of his anonymous role in that 2022 World Cup win (56 runs at 11.20 in six matches), which if nothing else was proof that experience cannot be bought off a peg. But more problematically, it reflects Brook’s lack of opportunity in white-ball cricket to date, given his extraordinarily central importance to England’s Test fortunes.This is where Key’s concerns about the timing really hit home. For all that Brook’s unveiling as white-ball captain will be a proud moment – and his sparky leadership against Australia last September suggests there’ll be plenty tactical nous on show when he takes the field against West Indies – there’s also little doubt where his true focus will be heading into a genuinely seismic nine months.Related
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England’s Test team, for which Brook is currently the No.2-ranked batter in the world behind Joe Root, has five home Tests against India looming in June and July, followed by the Ashes in Australia from November to January. It promises to be a legacy-defining period for the team’s elder statesmen – Stokes, Root and Mark Wood in particular – but also for the Bazball project itself, as the players are just about allowing themselves to call it these days.As Brook noted when pulling out of the IPL, “it is a really important time for England cricket … I need time to recharge.” No wonder he’s missing the opening rounds of the Championship to take a family holiday. All being well with his form and fitness, he is going to be the busiest player on the planet in the coming 12 months, because no sooner does the Ashes end than he’ll be leading the T20I side in the next World Cup in India. By which stage, the 2027 World Cup will be little more than a year away. Rinse, repeat … sleep whenever there’s a chance.It’s a rod that England made for their own back, from the moment they won the 2019 World Cup then spurned the format that had brought them glory. Every ounce of know-how has subsequently been re-invested in the Test set-up, at the expense of the white-ball game … with the honorable exception of Buttler, whose career was sent off on a branch-line while his generational peers got busy Bazballing.The irony is that Buttler should never have had to become a man apart in England’s white-ball set-up. Hindsight suggests that England could have won that 2022 tournament on autopilot, and pretty much did, such was the residual excellence in their set-up – as epitomised by Stokes’ matchwinning innings in the final, having not played T20Is in 18 months prior to the tournament.Now, under McCullum, there has at least been a belated attempt at unification, to ensure that the same values and knowledge that have reinvigorated the Test team are carried across formats before it’s too late. But this also means that Brook is the right choice as white-ball captain because he’s a guaranteed pick across formats, but also the wrong choice because he’s a guaranteed pick across formats. Go figure. It’s a mess, and there are no easy answers.
