In a major development, Joe Root decided to step down as England’s Test captain on Friday. Root ended a five-year-long tenure as England’s most successful Test captain with 27 victories, more than former captains Michael Vaughan, Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss.
Root decided to quit captaincy following England’s Test series defeats against Australia and West Indies, leaving behind the burning question of ‘who will be England’s next skipper?’. Reacting to the red-hot topic, former England captains Nasser Hussain and Vaughan have picked their choice of who can replace Root to lead England.
Vaughan went with allrounder Ben Stokes and said the southpaw has got a smart brain and shall be respected by his teammates as skipper.
“I don’t see anyone else who could take the position and be guaranteed of their place in the side. In Ben Stokes, you have clearly got someone who has got a smart cricket brain, he’s going to give it everything, he is certainly going to have the respect of the players around him,” Vaughan told the BBC.
Hussain also picked Stokes as his choice but mentioned that the management should ensure of him coping up with the demands of captaincy role.
“You have to be in a good place mentally and physically to do the job — and Ben has had his problems away from the field. Whoever the new director of cricket is, the first thing they must do is … sit down with Stokes, look him in the eye and find out where he is,” Hussain wrote in his Daily Mail column.
Notably, Stokes took an indefinite break from cricket in July 2021 to focus on his mental health. The 30-year-old returned to England’s Test team for the Ashes series and is currently on course of making a come back for Durham in the County Championship next month.
