CAN BIG BEN REIN IN THAT FIRE?
Vice-captain may have to pick battles wisely
page 8
The appointment of Ben Stokes as England vice-captain to Joe Root is one of English cricket’s boldest decisions since Nasser Hussain was made captain 18 years ago.
While Root was a foregone conclusion as Alastair Cook’s successor as Test captain, an accession that was obvious once Root cut the cocky kid act a few years ago, Stokes’ promotion as his deputy would have required a larger leap of faith. Arrested for anti-social behaviour in 2011, sent home from an England Lions tour for persistent late-night drinking in 2013, Stokes appeared to be heading for an Asbo rather than absolution.
It wasn’t just off the field, either, that he was a fully signed-up hothead resplendent with tattoos, a combination the establishment normally avoids when choosing players for higher office. In short, Stokes looked to be the opposite of Cook, whose tarnish-free image once moved Giles Clarke to describe him as “very much the sort of person we want the England captain and his family to be”.
What Clarke meant to say was that Cook is polite, contained, well-spoken and public-school educated, none of which can be readily applied to Stokes.
Stokes is not head honcho, yet, but he will be if Root is injured, inconvenienced or, heaven forfend, banned for slow over rates. Whenever that happens, and it will, the outcome promises to be anything but dull with Stokes leading the way.
It has been reported that Root, who shares the same agent as Stokes – former England and Lancashire batsman Neil Fairbrother at Chubby Chandler’s International Sports Managment stable – was behind the latter’s elevation to vice-captain. That may be true to the point where he put the suggestion to Andrew Strauss, England’s director of cricket, but the chief engineer behind the appointment was Trevor Bayliss, England’s Australian cricket coach.
In classic old-fashioned Aussie style (not the namby-pamby, politically correct attitude this nanny state now holds), Bayliss would have looked not at Stokes’ past or his occasional bad behaviour, but at how he responds and is responded to within the team and inside the dressing room. What he discovered, apart from the obvious fact that Stokes is a hallmarked silverback among the team’s alpha males, was an exceptional cricket brain always offering solutions and suggestions, most of them well argued.
Being a genuine all-rounder, Stokes sees things from both perspectives, and Bayliss has been impressed with both the range of his ideas at team meetings as well as the zeal with which he proposes them.
Stokes is also irrepressibly upbeat and positive, much as one imagines a young Ian Botham to have been before expectations from a smitten public began to weigh him down. Botham did become captain of England, but failed to win a single Test from his 12 in charge, though nine of them were against the West Indies, then the mightiest force in cricket who were brushing all-comers to one side with ease.
With his ‘up and at ’em’ attitude, you can certainly see Stokes being the tub-thumper to Root’s more cerebral approach as captain, a potentially beguiling combination as England look to the future with a cadre of exceptional ‘twenty somethings’ which include the skipper and his vice, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler and of course the promising duo of Haseeb Hameed and Keaton Jennings.
Harnessing the rage within certain players is never easy, though handing those players responsibility can sometimes still the storm. Like Stokes, Nasser Hussain was a stroppy young cricketer who never looked remotely destined for higher office during his early years as a player. Indeed, when I suggested, in 1993, that Essex make him their next captain after Graham Gooch, I was laughed out of Chelmsford.
Six years later, though mostly because England’s selectors had exhausted their options, he was made captain of England after the departing Alec Stewart. What a revelation that proved to be as he and Duncan Fletcher turned the team from being the worst in the world – after losing to New Zealand in the summer of 1999 – to third behind Australia and South Africa by the time Nasser called it quits four years later to make way for Michael Vaughan.
Hussain had gained some experience of the role with Essex beforehand, a grounding just not available to today’s England captains and their deputies. It is a shortcoming the England and Wales Cricket Board is addressing through Andy Flower and his leadership programme, though one wonders if Flower would have picked out Stokes given he was behind sending him home from Australia, along with Matt Coles, all those years ago?
The key is to spot those players whose aggression and petulance are due to passion, frustration and other players falling short of their high standards (Hussain and Stokes), and those in whom it is a destructive force (Mark Ramprakash). The penny usually drops with the former but often remains stuck in the slot with the latter, much to everyone’s frustration.
There is a caveat to consider here. Stokes is an incredible competitor and a cricketer driven by the ire that burns within, so you would not want that alchemy to be altered much by the responsibilities of office. Bayliss will have considered this and decided it was a risk worth taking, but it must be monitored if England are not to have their best all-rounder since Botham neutered by the niceties expected of a vice-captain.
On the other hand, there are those who think that Stokes’ new-found responsibilities might help him pick his fights more judiciously. In India, it was noticeable how he and Virat Kohli, India’s captain, usually had a few words saved up when one or the other came to the crease. On figures alone Kohli and India won that battle comfortably, though if Stokes does possess a savviness worthy of his new office, he will know that sledging Kohli brings out the best in him and will bite his lip next time.
It is details like this that will see whether he is worthy of his appointment or whether his tempestuous character will forever retain the tempest. Somehow, I suspect it will be the latter though which will better serve England cricket is a debatable point.
Harnessing the rage within certain players is never easy, though handing those players responsibility can sometimes still the storm