Who should replace Cook? Vote below and tweet @SkyCricket
Thursday 9 February 2017 18:04, UK
Now that Alastair Cook has relinquished the Test captaincy, who is set to become England's new skipper?
Everything points to it being Joe Root, Cook's vice-captain and 'England's best player', according to Jimmy Anderson, who lent him his backing this week.
But Cook himself singled out a few other strong options when bowing out in front of the press on Monday.
"Joe has got a very, very good cricket brain and would be an outstanding candidate," said Cook. "But Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow would also come into consideration because of their standing in the dressing room.
"Plus, there's Stuart Broad, who alongside Jimmy, lead the bowlers and can give opinions on certain things because of their experience."
So with England seemingly so spoiled for choice, we pick out some of the more likely contenders to be Cook's successor. Vote, and read on below…
The natural heir to the throne, and the most obvious candidate to replace Cook. Root's promotion to vice-captain of the Test team - in place of Ian Bell - was one of Andrew Strauss' first acts as England's director of cricket in the spring of 2015, showing the high regard in which he is held, both by Strauss, and the England dressing room.
Having studied the role of skipper a little more closely while operating in Cook's shadows for the past two years - helping oversee an Ashes win in 2015 and successful tour of South Africa that winter - Root is now ready to make the step up.
A step up that Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, and Virat Kohli - who Root is constantly compared against as the leading batsmen in the game currently - have all made. The extra responsibility has added hugely to their batting, rather than hindering it, giving cause to optimism that it could do the same for Root.
The one argument used against Root is his lack of captaincy experience, having not captained Yorkshire at county level. So, with that in mind, where might England turn? Well, they already have a hugely successful, innovative skipper on their books, in the shape of white-ball captain, Eoin Morgan.
Despite the success Morgan has enjoyed - 18 wins in the last 32 ODIs, and a World T20 silver medal, since overseeing a disastrous 2015 World Cup campaign - he is not a universally loved figure by fans due in large part to his inconsistent form with the bat, and refusal to lead the team on the tour of Bangladesh last autumn, due to security concerns.
Like Root, he is well liked and respected, by the dressing room, but Morgan's Test credentials count against him - a Test average of only 30.43 across 16 matches, the last of which was in 2012 - as well as the fact he hardly appears in first-class cricket for Middlesex these days.
Of the other alternatives put forward by Cook, Stokes is perhaps the most likely option, with Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler arguably still jostling for the wicketkeeper's position, let alone the England captaincy; though it should be added that the latter did a stellar job when filling in as white-ball skipper in Morgan's absence in Bangladesh.
Stokes is only 25, the youngest of our potential candidates, which arguably counts against him, as does the occasional hot-headed outburst. But undoubtedly, Stokes is the man this England team is set to be built around over the next decade, so why not let him build it in his own image?
The job proved to be a burden though for the country's last match-winning allrounder, Andrew Flintoff, with Freddie only able to lead the team to two victories in 11 Tests, and a 5-0 whitewash defeat in the 2006/07 Ashes. Having said that, another England allrounder - similarly of the red-headed, north-eastern variety - Paul Collingwood, had more joy, leading England to their only major ICC trophy, when winning the World T20 in 2010.
Broad was introduced alongside Cook in a three-pronged captaincy announcement - with Test skipper Strauss - in 2011, as Cook succeeded Strauss in ODIs, while Broad took over from Collingwood in T20s, despite that World T20 win a year earlier.
But the co-captaincy idea didn't really work out, with Broad leading England to only 11 wins in 27 games in charge, and his time as captain was called to a close after England crashed out early in the 2014 World T20, falling to an embarrassing 45-run defeat to the Netherlands.
That, however, is a harsh reflection of Broad's three years in charge, as on only five occasions did he lead his team in a multiple-match series, with the one-and-done aspect of T20 international series' hardly conducive to building an identity and spirit within a team as captain. A supremely skilled and intelligent bowler, surely such talents could be harnessed further as skipper?
