50 Monday May 2 2022 | the timesSportCricket
5Yorkshire were denied by bad light as
they missed out on the opportunity to
chase 114 in the final 21 overs of a
thrilling final day against Kent at
Headingley.
Much to the dissatisfaction of the
locals, the umpires, Graham Lloyd and
Steve O’Shaughnessy, took the players
off before Yorkshire had a chance to
face a ball in their chase. Ben Compton,
with 93, Grant Stewart (90) and Ollie
Robinson, the 23-year-old wicketkeep-Yorkshire frustrated by defiant Kent batsmen and bad light
er who made an unbeaten 85, had
looked to have initially guided Kent to
safety before the loss of four wickets for
nine runs in 24 balls.
Essex held on for a draw at Chelms-
ford having been asked to follow on
against Northamptonhire thanks to 93
by Paul Walter and a defiant 174-ball
innings of 33 by Adam Wheater.
Surrey stayed top of Division One,
remaining unbeaten after a high-
scoring draw in Bristol on the flattest of
pitches. Persistent rain intervened to
deny Chris Dent of Gloucestershire the
chance to beat his career-best score of268 as the final day was abandoned
without a ball bowled, leaving the
31-year-old on his overnight 207 not out.
This was a match that may have
prompted the bowlers from both sides
to re-evaluate their life choices after
1,046 runs were scored for the loss of
only 12 wickets.
Hampshire stay in hot pursuit of
Surrey at the top with their match
against Lancashire at the Ageas Bowl
also succumbing to weather on the final
day, ruining what was shaping up to be
a hard-fought contest. Both sides
claimed 12 points and Lancashire’sunbeaten run in first-class cricket away
to Hampshire stretches to 33 years.
James Anderson, on his return to action
for the first time since the Sydney Test in
January, took six wickets in the match.
In Division Two, Alex Lees, the man
in possession of an England Test open-
er’s berth, helped Durham to earn a
draw against Sussex by scoring 105 at
Hove in a second-innings opening part-
nership of 313 with Sean Dickson, who
made 186. Ollie Robinson, 28, who is
trying to prove his fitness before the
first Test at the start of June, was pulled
out of the match before the start by theECB, which was concerned he was not
sufficiently fit to be able to get through
a full four-day match.
Glamorgan narrowly failed to pull
off a thrilling chase against Derbyshire.
Set 331 in 55 overs, Australia’s Marcus
Labuschagne, with 85 from 87 balls, and
Sam Northeast, with 81 off 101, put the
Welsh side on course for victory but
they could not quite get over the line.
With only two wickets remaining and
23 needed off the last over they decided
to call off the chase, meaning the teams
took 14 points apiece from the match.
County boards, page 48County Championship round-up
Elizabeth Ammonthe Zimbabwean, who used to
compare Trescothick to the former
South Africa and Zimbabwe off
spinner John Traicos as the perfect
vice-captain.
Some players are just better No 2s.
Advising is very different from
making the big calls. As Brearley says,
not every vice-president wants to be
president, or indeed has the skills and
qualities to be president. In another
era where there were more world-
class players in the England side and
therefore more potential leaders, we
might have been saying something
similar about Stokes, that he was an
ideal deputy. He was fiercely loyal to
Root and was enough of a leader
without wearing the captain’s
armband and having to make the
tactical calls, and you do wonder
whether the plan actually was for him
to take over in time.
In the end there was no alternative,
and it will be fascinating to see how he
fares. Just as fascinating will be to see
what he does about a deputy, or rather
what the players selected do about
becoming that deputy, because it will
require one of the younger brigade to
cement a place before even being
contemplated. Ollie Pope would be
my long-term prediction. But he is not
even in the side at the moment, thus
highlighting the problems. He, like so
many others, has so much to do.the rest. He plumped for Fred Titmus
as vice-captain as a means of keeping
those senior players on side. The
more mischievous might ask whether
he might choose Broad or Anderson
now.
Brad Haddin, the former Australia
wicketkeeper, was vice-captain to
Michael Clarke, and in an excellent
column for ESPN Cricinfo he once
said this about the role: “Vice-
captaincy is a low-profile job that’s
not fully understood by many, but it is
vital to helping get a successful team
moving in the right direction
together. It needs you to be adviser,
mentor, morale-booster, minder, and
unambitious about the top job.”
His comments are interesting
because you read them and it is hard
not to think immediately of Marcus
Trescothick, who was such a fine
vice-captain to Michael Vaughan for
England (even if Vaughan did say
“vice-captaincy is a load of garbage”
in The Telegraph last week) and who
did so much to change the principles
of the England dressing room, not
least in halting the constant and
scathing mickey-taking of colleagues
that used to frequent almost all
cricket teams.
Trescothick captained England in
two Test matches but, though he was
very close to Fletcher, he was never
considered as a long-term captain byacted as a mentor and coach to
Crawley thus far in his career.
Crawley is averaging only 17.33 in
three County Championship matches
this season too.
The new head coach will obviously
have an important say because he will
have his thoughts on how a team’s
hierarchy and communication
channels are structured. Gary
Kirsten, for example, is a disciple of
Duncan Fletcher, who preferred a
middle-management group of players,
including a vice-captain, from
different parts of the squad to counsel
captain and coach.
But the crux here is: what exactly
are we looking for in a vice-captain?
In such matters the bible that is
Brearley’s Art of Captaincy is always
an advisable first port of call.
“In selecting a vice-captain,
thought should be given to the
candidate’s ability to captain a side in
the short term; his ability to advise
and help the captain; and his
potential for captaincy and
willingness to learn,” Brearley wrote.
“Different qualities may be more
desirable at different stages in the
captain’s career.”
Brearley goes on to describe how,
when he first took over the Middlesex
captaincy in 1971, there was a division
between a group of senior players,
who had all played for England, andStokes clearly treasured the position
of vice-captain, thus his pleading text
in 2019 to ECB chief executive, Tom
Harrison, for reinstatement in the
role. Stokes considered it an
important step on the journey from
junior to senior player and beyond. “It
suggests that the transitions for your
career have gone well over the first
four to five years and that the team
management view you as being a
fixture for a few years to come,” he
wrote in his book, On Fire.
The trouble is: who is there in that
position now that Stokes was in 2017?
Bairstow maybe? Rory Burns might
have fallen into this category had he
not lost his place, and there is always
a chance that Jos Buttler could return
to the role that he was occupying
when Stokes sent that text. Ben
Foakes did not nail down the
wicketkeeping spot in the Caribbean,
after all.
But the greater sadness is that there
is no young player who can obviously
be primed as vice-captain over time
to take over eventually when Stokes’s
tenure ends. This should be the
preferable route in this country, given
that it is so difficult for players to gain
captaincy experience with their
counties once an England regular.
But selecting someone such as Zak
Crawley now would be fraught with
danger, not least for Key, who hasW
ho’s next in line
then? It may be
considered a little
premature to be
pondering who
might take over should Ben Stokes be
unable to captain England in a Test
this summer, given that the reins were
handed to him only last week and
that there are clearly some weightier
positions to be filled at the ECB for
now — chairman, head coaches of
red-ball and white-ball teams and a
national selector to name but a few —
but the question of Stokes’s vice-
captain, and if he indeed needs one,
forms an intriguing debate, especially
as Stokes regularly leaves the field
with niggles. As with the captaincy
issue, there are precious few options.
You can understand why the new
managing director of England men’s
cricket, Rob Key, says he is not losing
sleep over the post.
“I am not concerned with having to
appoint a vice-captain — Ben might
have his views on who he wants but
you can get tripped up thinking about
vice-captains and all that — there are
plenty of people who can look after it
if Ben is on the field and he needs to
go off,” he said. “If Ben is not fit for
whatever reason then we have to
think about that a bit more, but it is
low down on my priorities, and I
think we can move pretty quickly to
give you an answer if we had to. If
Ben can’t play, then we think about it.
We have people in mind [but] it is just
something that doesn’t bother me at
the moment.”
Indeed, that is all fair enough. A
team does not have to have a vice-
captain. Sometimes appointing one
can do more harm than good, putting
noses out of joint unnecessarily. I
wish I’d listened to my predecessor as
captain at Glamorgan (I was no Mike
Brearley, for sure), who, knowing the
political mechanisms of the dressing
room too well, advised against a vice-
captain at that time, preferring an
unofficial senior professional who
could take over if required.
As Key says, England could do that
now, with players such as Stuart
Broad, James Anderson and Jonny
Bairstow possibilities to take over if
Stokes left the field or missed the odd
Test match. Joe Root could even be
persuaded to help out in extremis.
But it should be noted how muchEngland need vice-captain – but who?
It was an important
step in Stokes’s career,
Steve James writes, and
a role that must
be addressed
whatever the
reluctance
PAUL CHILDS/ACTION IMAGES/REUTERS
Stokes, right,
consults with
predecessor
Root, centre,
and Anderson