Mark Butcher pitches for one head coach across formats for England

Former England Test cricketer and cricket commentator Mark Butcher feels that Rob Key, England’s new Managing Director of Cricket, should appoint one common Head Coach for the England Team across all formats of the game.

Before his appointment, Key had the opinion that England’s coaching duties should be divided into two, and the team should have a different Head Coach for both the red ball and white ball format. He also said that Key should look into bringing back a national selector at the ECB. After Ed Smith parted ways with the England and Wales Cricket Board last year, the role of the national selector was eradicated

“I don’t necessarily subscribe to the view that the coaching roles should be split. I still think you should have one man in charge. Yes, because of the way the scheduling is, one man would not be able to fulfill all the roles and in that case, you need good assistant coaches and people you can delegate to,” Butcher told Sky Sports.

“But I would rather have one man in charge of the whole thing for the simple reason that it is human nature that if you have players moving between two dressing rooms under different leaders they are going to prefer the way one guy does it to the other. I think one man is the key. The coach should be a facilitator and bring out the best in the players he has, allowing the captain to run the ship. The captain, unlike in football, is the most important person and his decisions stick,” Butcher opined.

Mark Butcher feels Ben Stokes is the right candidate to step into the captaincy role

It has also come to notice that Rob Key will be meeting with Ben Stokes, looking at him as the rightful candidate to bear England’s Test Captaincy as Joe Root has stepped down. Butcher feels that after Root, Stokes is the only player who can be looked upon for the role.

“In other times I would say don’t give Ben Stokes the captaincy, he is too important as a player and a talisman. He leads by example by dint of his performances on the field and doesn’t need to be captain for people to follow him,” he said.

“However, only himself and Root are 100 percent guaranteed picks so he is perhaps the only person who can be given the job. If Stokes wants to take on the role, that’s the end of the conversation and I think it is made easier by the fact that Root has stepped down rather than been fired,” he further stated.