England’s managing director Rob Key believes it would be a mistake not to consider Ben Stokes as captain of the ODI team. However, England are coming from another poor ICC tournament, having exited the 2025 Champions Trophy in the group stage without a single win as well. After this, Jos Buttler stepped down as captain, leaving the management with an important decision to take as well.
“Ben Stokes is one of the best captains I’ve ever seen. So it would be stupid not to look at him. It’s just the knock-on effect of what that means,” Key told reporters on Thursday (March 6). “I think nothing’s off the table really. You look at every single option and you think, right, what is the best thing to do? How is that going to impact on other things?”
He again added, “He’s an unbelievably good tactician, which we’ve seen in Test cricket, but he’s a leader of men. He’s someone who gets the best out of people. He’s someone that, when the pressure is really on, he’s able to throw a blanket around the players and actually say, ‘no, no, this is the way forward. Keep going with it.’ They’re the qualities that you need in leadership. Ben’s, as we know, an outstanding player, an outstanding leader. It’s more about, what would that then mean to him? What would that then mean to his workload?
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“We don’t want to risk other things as well. But there’s always a way in England, I think, where you start looking at, ‘what if it goes wrong?’ You’ve also got to think, ‘what if it goes right?’ They’re the decisions that I have to make,” he further stated.
As a Test captain, Ben Stokes did well along with Brendon McCullum. He also took charge of England’s white-ball teams earlier this year, but that appointment has not given immediate results, with England losing 10 of their 11 limited-overs matches in 2024 as well. Key also suggested that reuniting Stokes and McCullum in ODIs could be beneficial as well.
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“When you start looking at it, I believe that Test cricket and 50-over cricket are probably closer than T20s, which is the outlier now. So then that makes different things. We look at India and the way they play T20 cricket, and they’ve got all these young players coming through, but it’s their Test players that are making the difference in 50-over cricket,” Rob Key shared.
“I think Harry Brook would be an outstanding captain actually. I was cautious about Ben Stokes doing it and having too much, and look how that’s gone. I think he [Stokes] might bring out the best in Harry Brook. Being able to go out there and feel like the extra responsibility sometimes, for people, is the best thing that can happen for them. Sometimes it’s not. They’re the decisions you have to work out,” Rob Key concluded.
