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Can anyone lip read,would like to know what he said to Ben stokes when they were one to one
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probably said ...you've just saved my captaincy for a bit longer but it will be yours soon enough
Root should be dropped as captain and be given to Stokes in my opinion
Although as someone else pointed out would giving Stokes the captaincy help? he's already being relied upon to take wickets and match winning 100s with the bat ffs
I'd argue someone like Woakes might be best for the captaincy, someone who isn't a "big" player, doesn't really get pressured to take 5fors and score big with the bat, so he might thrive of being captain
Root isn't the man for the role though we can all agree on that
Although as someone else pointed out would giving Stokes the captaincy help? he's already being relied upon to take wickets and match winning 100s with the bat ffs
I'd argue someone like Woakes might be best for the captaincy, someone who isn't a "big" player, doesn't really get pressured to take 5fors and score big with the bat, so he might thrive of being captain
Root isn't the man for the role though we can all agree on that
Aug 26, 2019 -- 1:08AM, SontaranStratagem wrote:
Root should be dropped as captain and be given to Stokes in my opinion Although as someone else pointed out would giving Stokes the captaincy help? he's already being relied upon to take wickets and match winning 100s with the bat ffs I'd argue someone like Woakes might be best for the captaincy, someone who isn't a "big" player, doesn't really get pressured to take 5fors and score big with the bat, so he might thrive of being captain Root isn't the man for the role though we can all agree on that
a bit like Noddy Holder for WI
Woakes' place in the side isn't solid enough to be captain. Good chance he won't play at Old Trafford if Anderson is back fit.
All other things being equal should the responsibility of captain be landed upon the shoulders of a top batsman, a top bowler, a top wicket-keeper, or a good all-rounder? Discuss....
Good question.
The reality with most good questions however, as much as people would like to believe otherwise, is it depends.
There are three key factors that require to be addressed up front:
1 - Is the candidate for captaincy a shoe in for selection ?
Difficult to justify having a captain who is a borderline selection, all eleven players require to step up to player roles, little room for a specialist captain who is deficient as a batsmen, bowler, or wicketkeeper.
2 - Does the candidate want to be captain ?
A reluctant captain would appear to be less likely to succeed than one who willingly takes on and embraces the role.
3 - Does the candidate have the necessary characteristics to succeed in the role ?
What might those characteristics be is a very valid question, but one that does not have a definitive answer, despite the abundance of literature on the subject of leadership that would have you believe otherwise.
You also require to consider what the role involves.
For simplicity, I would categorise this in to three areas i.e. media, motivation, and decision making.
The playing role of the captain will have little or no impact in their ability to perform the media and much of the motivational aspects of captaincy.
It could be argued, however, that it will impact their decision making.
For example, a captain who is a top bowler may be conflicted as to when they should bowl themselves.
Additionally, a bowling captain who is bowling poorly may have their on field decision making process adversely affected as a result of their bowling under performance.
A top batsmen, however, will not be conflicted by decisions as to when to bowl themselves and should be capable of having left any personal batting performances behind in the dressing room before setting off in to the field.
So, an apparent slight advantage to the batsmen, but still very much remains dependant on the individuals concerned.
And similar pros and cons will apply when looking at the wicket keeper or an all rounder being the captain.
So, to kick off the debate, I would conclude by saying that the choice of captain should be less about their playing role and more about their ability to bring value to the role of captain through their motivational and decision making abilities with the particular group of players that they are likely to captain.
The reality with most good questions however, as much as people would like to believe otherwise, is it depends.
There are three key factors that require to be addressed up front:
1 - Is the candidate for captaincy a shoe in for selection ?
Difficult to justify having a captain who is a borderline selection, all eleven players require to step up to player roles, little room for a specialist captain who is deficient as a batsmen, bowler, or wicketkeeper.
2 - Does the candidate want to be captain ?
A reluctant captain would appear to be less likely to succeed than one who willingly takes on and embraces the role.
3 - Does the candidate have the necessary characteristics to succeed in the role ?
What might those characteristics be is a very valid question, but one that does not have a definitive answer, despite the abundance of literature on the subject of leadership that would have you believe otherwise.
You also require to consider what the role involves.
For simplicity, I would categorise this in to three areas i.e. media, motivation, and decision making.
The playing role of the captain will have little or no impact in their ability to perform the media and much of the motivational aspects of captaincy.
It could be argued, however, that it will impact their decision making.
For example, a captain who is a top bowler may be conflicted as to when they should bowl themselves.
Additionally, a bowling captain who is bowling poorly may have their on field decision making process adversely affected as a result of their bowling under performance.
A top batsmen, however, will not be conflicted by decisions as to when to bowl themselves and should be capable of having left any personal batting performances behind in the dressing room before setting off in to the field.
So, an apparent slight advantage to the batsmen, but still very much remains dependant on the individuals concerned.
And similar pros and cons will apply when looking at the wicket keeper or an all rounder being the captain.
So, to kick off the debate, I would conclude by saying that the choice of captain should be less about their playing role and more about their ability to bring value to the role of captain through their motivational and decision making abilities with the particular group of players that they are likely to captain.
Good response!
The issue I had in mind was whether the burden of captaincy would impact their performance in their specialist role.
For example, a top batsman who starts getting ducks instead of centuries once he's made captain is arguably quite a serious issue whereas a bowler losing their umph is probably easier to work around.
The issue I had in mind was whether the burden of captaincy would impact their performance in their specialist role.
For example, a top batsman who starts getting ducks instead of centuries once he's made captain is arguably quite a serious issue whereas a bowler losing their umph is probably easier to work around.
If Stokes became captain it would go exactly as Botham and Flintoff's captaincies did. Shouldn't even be considered. Let him do what he's doing which is go out and play and let somebody else take over when Root is replaced.
If Stokes became captain it would go exactly as Botham and Flintoff's captaincies did. Shouldn't even be considered. Let him do what he's doing which is go out and play and let somebody else take over when Root is replaced.
Good piece by Mike Atherton in The Times on this today:
Forget the England captaincy: Ben Stokes is already the perfect leader
mike atherton, chief cricket correspondent
Last year the England team analyst, Nathan Leamon, wrote a fine novel called The Test. It is a fictional work, with characters drawn partly from his imagination and partly from an amalgamation of players whom he had come across from various dressing rooms in which he has worked. He was at pains to tell me, out of respect for his role, that none of the characters was based on current England cricketers. Except one.
Over two pages midway through the novel, the absent and injured England captain, Rob, is described like this by his stand-in replacement: “He is genuinely a person apart, our captain; different both in kind and degree to anyone I’ve ever known. It is difficult to describe, hard to capture his presence . . . he is the centre of the room. So solid, he makes the world around him fainter, like an explosion of power at rest.
“It’s the eyes that tell you first. The eyes say, ‘I see you.’ And the Viking arms, that could sack the monastery at Lindisfarne, then pull an oar for a day and not notice. His handshake is like two feet calmly planted on firm ground. Whatever it is that comes before Alpha. The eyes come and meet you just your side of halfway. ‘I see you,’ they say.
“Don’t get me wrong. He is no angel . . . But in here, he is rudder, and compass, and engine. The whole team, different and disparate, most of them older than he is, follow him without a thought. Without question, without doubt, without fear. I look at his cap on its peg, sun-bleached, sweat-stained . . .”
When I interviewed Leamon last year, he didn’t want me to recall the player upon whom this description is based. I knew, of course, but respected the confidence. Today, I asked him if I could share his description of “Rob”, aka Ben Stokes, and he was happy for me to do so. The rudder, the compass, the engine of the team — a roundabout way of saying, as Joe Root did after the Headingley Test match, that Stokes is “the ultimate team man” and the ultimate leader.
Having watched Stokes’s performance in the game that ended in such a dramatic fashion on Sunday, no one would be surprised at the description. He has been the heartbeat of the team throughout the summer, at the sharp end in the World Cup final and the critical third Test at Headingley with the Ashes on the line. He has been the heartbeat for longer than that, too, which is why his loss was so keenly felt on the last tour to Australia, when he was forced to sit it out for his part in a late-night fracas, his involvement in which he has come to deeply regret.
It is why England were keen to restore him this summer to some kind of role of authority. On the eve of this series, and after his performance in the World Cup final, Stokes was returned to the vice-captaincy, instead of Jos Buttler. Buttler had done nothing wrong, and may well be the next one-day captain of England, but Stokes’s return as Root’s right-hand man was given a ringing endorsement from the very people who had sanctioned his sanctions for Australia — Tom Harrison and Colin Graves, as well as Ashley Giles, Root and, no doubt, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
Leadership is about more than being given stripes, a captain’s allowance, a coin to toss or a title. It is seen in the training sessions that Stokes puts in when no one is looking. Trevor Bayliss told a story in Sri Lanka about walking into the team hotel’s restaurant one night of the Test in Colombo and seeing Stokes coming out of the gym, lathered in sweat, after a hard day in the field. Moeen Ali — Ali and Stokes are thick as thieves — was moved to extra fitness sessions on that tour, despite being normally allergic to the charms of the gym.
It is seen in the debilitating 16-over spell, lessened only by four balls from Jofra Archer, that Stokes bowled on the second evening at Headingley that kept his team in the game. There is a thought that Stokes was punishing himself in this spell for his abject dismissal that morning, and there may well be something in that. He still feels he owes his team-mates for that period on the sidelines in Australia and it drives him on to ever more ferocious training sessions and even greater deeds when games are slipping away.
This is how Stokes rationalised his bowling on the second evening: “That spell was a time to stand up and deliver. I really enjoy being the person that Joe turns to when it isn’t going our way. I don’t want to do the easy things; I want to do the hard yards as well. Whatever the stage of the game, whether it’s with bat or ball, the team that I’m playing for is going to get everything from me.” That is a pretty good definition of leadership, too.
There will be those who say, given all this, and given Leamon’s close-at-hand, authentic description, why not make Stokes captain? To which I would probably say, what’s the point? What more would you get from giving him the captaincy that you are not getting right now? What more could Stokes give to the team that he is not giving now? Why risk diminishing this prized asset by overburdening him with all manner of duties that are a captain’s lot but don’t necessarily amount to a hill of beans as far as leadership is concerned?
Stokes only appears to be happy if England are winning, regardless of his own performance
Stokes only appears to be happy if England are winning, regardless of his own performance
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Stokes is the fourth top-class Test all-rounder England have produced in modern times, after Tony Greig, Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff. None had Stokes’s work ethic — no one in the game that I have come across has — but all had charisma and a magnetism that drew other players into their orbit. All were given a go at the England captaincy because of it. It proved a natural fit for Greig; an expensive misfit for Botham and Flintoff.
Who knows what would happen if Stokes was given a go, but it seems to me to be unnecessary. Everything you want from a leader you are getting from him as it is. Stokes’s performance was likened to Botham’s at Headingley in 1981 which, remember, came in Botham’s first game back after losing the captaincy, having recorded a pair at Lord’s the game previous.
Like those all-rounders, Stokes finds his best when faced with Australia. There is a story told of his debut in Adelaide six years ago. Brad Haddin, a tough-nut wicketkeeper with a ready tongue, sledged Stokes, who had overstepped the front line after taking what would have been a maiden Test wicket. “That’ll be your first Test wicket and last,” Haddin said, before being warned by James Anderson and Matt Prior not to mess with a man whom Prior called a “nutter”. Stokes didn’t hear a peep out of Haddin after that.
Stokes has 135 Test wickets and nearly 3,500 Test runs, including 34 wickets and three hundreds against Australia, with more to come. As you saw on Sunday at Headingley — never has a century been celebrated in more subdued fashion — the personal milestones don’t mean much to him unless the team wins. That’s another good definition of leadership. In Leamon’s novel, Stokes may be Rob, the absent captain of the ship, but in real life he doesn’t need the England captaincy to be a leader the rest look up to and follow.
Forget the England captaincy: Ben Stokes is already the perfect leader
mike atherton, chief cricket correspondent
Last year the England team analyst, Nathan Leamon, wrote a fine novel called The Test. It is a fictional work, with characters drawn partly from his imagination and partly from an amalgamation of players whom he had come across from various dressing rooms in which he has worked. He was at pains to tell me, out of respect for his role, that none of the characters was based on current England cricketers. Except one.
Over two pages midway through the novel, the absent and injured England captain, Rob, is described like this by his stand-in replacement: “He is genuinely a person apart, our captain; different both in kind and degree to anyone I’ve ever known. It is difficult to describe, hard to capture his presence . . . he is the centre of the room. So solid, he makes the world around him fainter, like an explosion of power at rest.
“It’s the eyes that tell you first. The eyes say, ‘I see you.’ And the Viking arms, that could sack the monastery at Lindisfarne, then pull an oar for a day and not notice. His handshake is like two feet calmly planted on firm ground. Whatever it is that comes before Alpha. The eyes come and meet you just your side of halfway. ‘I see you,’ they say.
“Don’t get me wrong. He is no angel . . . But in here, he is rudder, and compass, and engine. The whole team, different and disparate, most of them older than he is, follow him without a thought. Without question, without doubt, without fear. I look at his cap on its peg, sun-bleached, sweat-stained . . .”
When I interviewed Leamon last year, he didn’t want me to recall the player upon whom this description is based. I knew, of course, but respected the confidence. Today, I asked him if I could share his description of “Rob”, aka Ben Stokes, and he was happy for me to do so. The rudder, the compass, the engine of the team — a roundabout way of saying, as Joe Root did after the Headingley Test match, that Stokes is “the ultimate team man” and the ultimate leader.
Having watched Stokes’s performance in the game that ended in such a dramatic fashion on Sunday, no one would be surprised at the description. He has been the heartbeat of the team throughout the summer, at the sharp end in the World Cup final and the critical third Test at Headingley with the Ashes on the line. He has been the heartbeat for longer than that, too, which is why his loss was so keenly felt on the last tour to Australia, when he was forced to sit it out for his part in a late-night fracas, his involvement in which he has come to deeply regret.
It is why England were keen to restore him this summer to some kind of role of authority. On the eve of this series, and after his performance in the World Cup final, Stokes was returned to the vice-captaincy, instead of Jos Buttler. Buttler had done nothing wrong, and may well be the next one-day captain of England, but Stokes’s return as Root’s right-hand man was given a ringing endorsement from the very people who had sanctioned his sanctions for Australia — Tom Harrison and Colin Graves, as well as Ashley Giles, Root and, no doubt, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
Leadership is about more than being given stripes, a captain’s allowance, a coin to toss or a title. It is seen in the training sessions that Stokes puts in when no one is looking. Trevor Bayliss told a story in Sri Lanka about walking into the team hotel’s restaurant one night of the Test in Colombo and seeing Stokes coming out of the gym, lathered in sweat, after a hard day in the field. Moeen Ali — Ali and Stokes are thick as thieves — was moved to extra fitness sessions on that tour, despite being normally allergic to the charms of the gym.
It is seen in the debilitating 16-over spell, lessened only by four balls from Jofra Archer, that Stokes bowled on the second evening at Headingley that kept his team in the game. There is a thought that Stokes was punishing himself in this spell for his abject dismissal that morning, and there may well be something in that. He still feels he owes his team-mates for that period on the sidelines in Australia and it drives him on to ever more ferocious training sessions and even greater deeds when games are slipping away.
This is how Stokes rationalised his bowling on the second evening: “That spell was a time to stand up and deliver. I really enjoy being the person that Joe turns to when it isn’t going our way. I don’t want to do the easy things; I want to do the hard yards as well. Whatever the stage of the game, whether it’s with bat or ball, the team that I’m playing for is going to get everything from me.” That is a pretty good definition of leadership, too.
There will be those who say, given all this, and given Leamon’s close-at-hand, authentic description, why not make Stokes captain? To which I would probably say, what’s the point? What more would you get from giving him the captaincy that you are not getting right now? What more could Stokes give to the team that he is not giving now? Why risk diminishing this prized asset by overburdening him with all manner of duties that are a captain’s lot but don’t necessarily amount to a hill of beans as far as leadership is concerned?
Stokes only appears to be happy if England are winning, regardless of his own performance
Stokes only appears to be happy if England are winning, regardless of his own performance
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Stokes is the fourth top-class Test all-rounder England have produced in modern times, after Tony Greig, Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff. None had Stokes’s work ethic — no one in the game that I have come across has — but all had charisma and a magnetism that drew other players into their orbit. All were given a go at the England captaincy because of it. It proved a natural fit for Greig; an expensive misfit for Botham and Flintoff.
Who knows what would happen if Stokes was given a go, but it seems to me to be unnecessary. Everything you want from a leader you are getting from him as it is. Stokes’s performance was likened to Botham’s at Headingley in 1981 which, remember, came in Botham’s first game back after losing the captaincy, having recorded a pair at Lord’s the game previous.
Like those all-rounders, Stokes finds his best when faced with Australia. There is a story told of his debut in Adelaide six years ago. Brad Haddin, a tough-nut wicketkeeper with a ready tongue, sledged Stokes, who had overstepped the front line after taking what would have been a maiden Test wicket. “That’ll be your first Test wicket and last,” Haddin said, before being warned by James Anderson and Matt Prior not to mess with a man whom Prior called a “nutter”. Stokes didn’t hear a peep out of Haddin after that.
Stokes has 135 Test wickets and nearly 3,500 Test runs, including 34 wickets and three hundreds against Australia, with more to come. As you saw on Sunday at Headingley — never has a century been celebrated in more subdued fashion — the personal milestones don’t mean much to him unless the team wins. That’s another good definition of leadership. In Leamon’s novel, Stokes may be Rob, the absent captain of the ship, but in real life he doesn’t need the England captaincy to be a leader the rest look up to and follow.
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