According to legend, some of the best Test captains never received the position. Like the renowned and bold New South Wales captain Keith Miller, who never captained Australia because he was always on the wrong side of the selectors, and Don Bradman, who detested how Miller played cricket.
Or Shane Warne, who won 10 of 11 games as captain of Australia’s one-day team but lost out to Steve Waugh for the Test captaincy, a decision which, it must be remembered, certainly spared the selectors from having to remove him when his next scandal arose a few months later.
In the 1920s, the English equivalent would be Percy Fender, who was reportedly a brilliant leader of a middling Surrey side. Fender participated in thirteen Tests but never held the lead. Douglas Jardine, his protégé, is said to have conceived Bodyline alongside him.
GH Hardy, a mathematician and cricket fanatic, spent his free time compiling all-time XIs. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein were at the top of the order, Moses and David were in the middle order, while God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit shared the bowling, with Fender as the opening bat and captain.
Other captaincy risks can pay off
In the public’s imagination, Fender, Miller, and Warne have impeccable records. Never having led, they have never lost. Instead of complaining about their mistakes, we imagine how different those teams would have been if they had been in charge. Miller’s and Warne’s eras in Australia were not particularly deficient.
This past year, seeing Ben Stokes guide England through three series victories over New Zealand, South Africa, and Pakistan and a single game against India felt like living in one of those hypothetical timelines as if we had stumbled across an alternate English cricket history.
Before anything else, England’s captain feels that the game should be pleasurable to play and interesting to watch. A captain who, like Miller, takes cricket seriously but not too seriously, who, like Warne, is ready to risk failure in search of a win. And who, like Fender, is imaginative on the field.
This is especially true in England, where the captaincy frequently goes to the best batsman regardless of whether or not they have any real aptitude for the position. In the past decade, Alastair Cook and Joe Root broke the record for most team-leading appearances without ever convincing anyone that they possessed a genuine aptitude for the position.
Under Cook, England won 41% of their matches; under Root, that number increased to 42%. Because there were no obvious alternatives to succeed them, neither lasted as long as they might have.
It turns out that Stokes had been hidden in plain sight the entire time. Even last year, there were valid reasons to not select him. Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham, England’s two other recent great all-rounders, had been broken by the captaincy, while Stokes had just returned from a period of mental health-related respite.
Ben Stokes’ performance
However, there were few alternatives. Sam Billings, who had just made his debut, joined Stokes, Stuart Broad, and Rory Burns. None of whom were guaranteed a spot on the team, on the candidate list.
The risks proved to be worthwhile. If you asked Rob Key, the managing director of England, who he believed was the most astute county captain. He would likely suggest they were usually exaggerated.
In reality, it arrived at the perfect time for Stokes. His captaincy has been shaped by his experiences on and off the field. Including being humiliated by Carlos Brathwaite in the World T20 final in 2016, nearly losing his career when he was charged with affray for fighting outside a nightclub in 2018, his front-row view of Eoin Morgan’s reinvention of England’s one-day team, his match-winning hand in the World Cup final in 2019, and his break from the game last year. All of these factors shaped his leadership and sense of what is essential.
Similarly, it was an ideal period for English cricket. After enduring the pandemic with grim determination, the team was at a low point. And unsure of how to translate their success in limited-overs cricket to Tests.
Brendon McCullum
After being defeated 4-0 in the Ashes and finishing dead last in the World Test Championship standings. The squad did not have much to lose when Stokes took over. According to him, it did not take much convincing to convince them to begin doing things differently.
He had Key behind him, and Brendon McCullum, too, men who see things in the same way he does. And since the sport was going through a high-performance assessment, a free hand to make the adjustments he desired.
It was intriguing listening to the new England rugby union head coach, Steve Borthwick, talk about his enthusiasm. For what Stokes and McCullum have done shortly before Christmas.
His boss — the Rugby Football Union chief executive, Bill Sweeney – acknowledged it, too. Regardless of the sport, suddenly everyone desires to be able to play the Stokes way. You wonder if Stokes would simply ask what’s stopping them.
