England want the “best person” to take over as white-ball skipper from Jos Buttler, with managing director of men’s cricket Rob Key adding that “nothing is off the table” when asked if Ben Stokes could combine the Test job with the ODI captaincy.
Key also suggested there could potentially be separate ODI and T20 captains going forward, saying: “I believe that Test cricket and 50-over cricket are probably closer now, with T20 the outlier.”
That prompted the question over whether Stokes – who played the last of his 114 ODIs during England’s dismal 2023 World Cup defence – could be up for consideration.
Ben Stokes last played an ODI for England in November 2023 during the last 50-over World Cup
“I think nothing’s off the table,” Key said of the 33-year-old. “You look at every single option and you think, ‘what is the best thing to do?’
“Ben Stokes is one of the best captains I’ve ever seen, so it’d be stupid not to look at him. It’s just the knock-on effect of what that means.”
Key added on the captaincy search: “You’re just looking for the best person, really, someone who you think can take this forward.
“We’re not going to rush this decision as well. We’ll take a bit of time.
“We’ve had a plan in place where we’ve looked at lots of different people, so we’ve seen Phil Salt, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook [in the role], there’s plenty of options.”
Nasser Hussain believes Harry Brook is the obvious candidate to take over as England’s next white-ball captain
Key: We haven’t been good since Morgan era | ‘Batting has fallen off a cliff’
Reflecting on England’s group-stage exit at the 2025 Champions Trophy which prompted Buttler’s resignation as captain, Key defended the make-up of the 15-player squad selected for the tournament held in the sub-continent.
England picked a three-pronged pace attack for the three defeats to Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa, with Brydon Carse and Mark Wood picking up injuries. Adil Rashid was originally the sole front-line spinner, until Rehan Ahmed was drafted in to replace Carse.
Dinesh Karthik gives his verdict on England’s white-ball cricket after their group-stage exit at the Champions Trophy, saying the messaging is ‘one-dimensional’
“We were very poor,” Key said. “The truth is, we haven’t been particularly good in white-ball cricket, probably since the last era when Eoin Morgan did it, and that’s for lots of different reasons.
“We look at every single thing, whether it’s variety in the attack, all the things that you read about. We think about where’s our left-arm spinner coming from? Is it [Liam] Dawson? Or are we going to go with just out-and-out pace to try and do what we think is our strength: pack the team full of batting, chase down anything and get over-par scores with the bat?
“We could have changed the selection, yes, but the fact is that if you’re not batting well and batting is your strength, that becomes a massive issue.
“When you start looking at it, over the last couple of years, the batting in particular has fallen off a cliff.”
Key: No issue with England training | ‘We’ve got to stop talking rubbish’
In preparation for the Champions Trophy, England toured India for five T20 internationals and a three-match ODI series, being well beaten in both, 4-1 and 3-0 respectively.
There were reports that Joe Root was the only player to have taken part in a net session during the ODI leg of the tour, which prompted criticism from former England batter Kevin Pietersen and ex-India captain and coach Ravi Shastri.
“A lot gets made of the way they go about things and the way they spend their time when they’re not playing, which I have no issue with,” Key said.
Nasser does not believe the England side are ‘lazy’ and feels recent results have contributed to the criticism surrounding their fitness
“The one thing I will say there was the story that came out from, I think, Ravi Shastri and Kevin Pietersen was just not true about the fact they’d only practised once.
“When I saw the team in Pakistan, they practised hard. They got stuck in; it wasn’t that they weren’t practising which was why we didn’t perform.
“I have no issue with the way our guys go about things, but there’s no doubt that we’ve got to get better when we’re doing interviews, when players are doing their post-match press conferences, we speak a lot of rubbish a lot of the time.
“They’re trying so hard to not sort of upset players in the dressing room, not try and give away something that they don’t think they should, and then they end up creating headlines through that. But I don’t kill people for the things they say.”
Michael Atherton described England’s innings against South Africa as a dreadful performance, insisting they cannot just rely on Ben Duckett and Joe Root all the time
Key added: “There’s not a world in where we think the players don’t care, that they don’t want to go and get big scores, that they don’t care about winning, that they’re arrogant.
“That’s absolutely not true. Half the time when they’re getting themselves into trouble it’s because they’re actually trying to concentrate so hard that they end up making mistakes.
“Sometimes they’re reckless, sometimes they make the wrong decision at the wrong time, but that’s the game, right?”
Watch the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy final between India and New Zealand, live on Sky Sports Cricket and Sky Sports Main Event from 8.30am on Sunday (9am first ball)
