England cricket: Jonathan Trott right man to join Jos Buttler as white-ball leaders – Steven Finn column

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

England cricket: Jonathan Trott right man to join Jos Buttler as white-ball leaders – Steven Finn column

Some will ask why Mott has had to make way, rather than captain Jos Buttler.

Buttler is England’s greatest white-ball player of all time, with a cricketing brain that reads situations second to none. There is a reason why Eoin Morgan had Buttler as his most trusted voice and, in my opinion, he is the correct person to lead this team.

Now, England need a clean slate for Buttler and the new coach to refresh the team.

Marcus Trescothick will be in temporary charge for the series against Australia in September, but after that there is only a tour of West Indies in November before a new year when England go to India to tune up for the Champions Trophy in Pakistan in late February.

As a captain, you want absolute clarity and simplicity when making decisions. It could be about selection, what to do at the toss or tactical changes during a match. A good place for Buttler to start would be to trust his intuition.

I worry that the England dressing-room was being drowned in too many voices. Buttler and Mott, both keen to learn and take the opinions of others, may have suffered from a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth in the Caribbean.

Along with the regular leadership team, England added big personalities – Andrew Flintoff and Kieron Pollard – to the staff. Analyst Freddie Wilde provided statistics and match-ups, and senior players would have offered their opinions.

All of that noise on top of a captain and coach constantly searching for their best team was a recipe for disaster. If the rain hadn’t relented in Antigua for

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and scrape through the group by the skin of their teeth, this decision could have come a good few weeks ago.

From my playing experience, the best coach-captain combinations are often slightly different characters and play different roles within the dressing room.

Andrew Strauss was authoritative yet thoughtful, Andy Flower intimidating and strong. As captain and coach respectively, they won the Ashes in Australia and made England the best Test team in the world.

Morgan and Trevor Bayliss were the men to

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Morgan was a strong-minded leader with the vision, while Bayliss wouldn’t speak to the group unless it was absolutely necessary. When he did speak, you knew he meant it.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#England #cricket #Jonathan #Trott #man #join #Jos #Buttler #whiteball #leaders #Steven #Finn #column

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up