{"id":518559,"date":"2026-06-30T17:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/518559\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T17:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:41:10","slug":"harry-brook-says-it-would-be-a-privilege-to-succeed-stokes-as-england-test-captain-england-cricket-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/518559\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Brook says it \u2018would be a privilege\u2019 to succeed Stokes as England Test captain | England cricket team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harry Brook has declared himself ready to take on England\u2019s vacant Test captaincy following the retirement of Ben Stokes<\/a>, saying it would be \u201ca great honour\u201d to be given the role and is open to being the country\u2019s first leader to unite the blazers across all formats since Andrew Strauss did so briefly in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be a privilege to do it, to captain England in the highest format of our game,\u201d Brook said. \u201cThe pinnacle, I think it is. Playing Test cricket is the greatest thing that I\u2019ve ever done in my life and it\u2019s a dream, and something I\u2019ve always wanted to do since I could speak. Look, it\u2019s not up to me, that decision \u2013 but if I got offered it, then I\u2019d be happy to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook already captains England\u2019s white-ball teams, and will lead them into the first of five T20s against India at Chester-le-Street on Wednesday, only two days after he was playing New Zealand in a Test at Trent Bridge. Brendon McCullum currently coaches across all formats, but schedules are often uncomfortably tight and nearly two decades have passed \u2013 and the landscape of cricket profoundly changed \u2013 since England last had a single captain across all formats, and in that period Strauss played only a single T20.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would be a tough job, but everything\u2019s tough in cricket. It\u2019s a hard sport,\u201d Brook said. \u201cLook, I\u2019ve committed completely to England cricket. I\u2019ve said that I don\u2019t want to play any franchise cricket bar the Hundred. Everything I want to do is to play cricket for England, and whatever I do on and off the field is to try and perform as well as I possibly can for England.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook\u2019s appointment could prelude the return of an ultra-attacking batting approach in Tests, after Stokes cooled on the philosophy towards the end of his time leading the team. \u201cI think everybody knows that I like going out there and trying to be fearless and putting the pressure back on the opposition,\u201d Brook said. \u201cThat\u2019s something I\u2019d have to think about further down the line if that was to arise. The decision isn\u2019t up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook is one of four members of the team for the last Test who are also in the T20 squad, though of those the two seamers, Jofra Archer and Josh Tongue, have been allowed some extra time at home to recover from their exertions at Trent Bridge and will not be available on Wednesday. Though Brook said \u201cour main focus was on the Test match\u201d he and McCullum have been able to do some planning for this series over the past few weeks.<\/p>\n

Harry Brook said England have plans to stop India\u2019s 15-year-old batting prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi during their T20 series. Photograph: Ashley Allen\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

One thing they have put plans in place for is the potential arrival in senior international cricket of the batting prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi<\/a>, top-scorer in this year\u2019s Indian Premier League with an astonishing 776 runs, at a strike rate of 237.30. \u201cWe\u2019ve got our tactics and hopefully they work,\u201d Brook said of the 15-year-old. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of digging behind the scenes to see what we can do to try and stop them from playing their best cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Quick GuideEngland v India: First T20 teamsShow<\/p>\n

England: Phil Salt, Jos Buttler (wk), Harry Brook (c), Jacob Bethell, Tom Banton, Sam Curran, Will Jacks, Liam Dawson, Adil Rashid, Luke Wood, Saqib Mahmood.<\/p>\n

India (possible): Sanju Samson, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan (wk), Shreyas Iyer (c), Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Suryansh Shedge, Axar Patel, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy.<\/p>\n

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Sooryavanshi played a 50-over game for India A in Sri Lanka 10 days ago, and Shreyas Iyer, their T20 captain, refused to be drawn on when he might make a full debut. \u201cThis is very private, we can\u2019t let everyone know about what combinations we are going to play and let the opponents know what is going to happen,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s a brilliant prodigy and whenever he gets the opportunity to play he\u2019ll definitely do brilliant.\u201d England, don\u2019t mind letting their opponents know what is going to happen and named their team on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

England and India last met in a thrilling T20 World Cup semi-final<\/a> in Mumbai\u2019s Wankhede Stadium in March, won by the hosts on their way to retaining their title. Brook duly declared these opponents \u201cthe best side in the world\u201d but they have made several changes since, including their captain, are without the peerless Jasprit Bumrah, and come into this series on the back of a humbling 2-0 defeat in Ireland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t embarrassing but it was depressing for us, because we definitely didn\u2019t expect Ireland to play that well,\u201d Iyer said. \u201cKudos to them, credit to them. But we learned a lot from that series and this is a completely new chapter for us. Some of us have played in England before and we know the conditions, we know the ideas, we know the dimensions. So we\u2019re looking forward to an intense and challenging series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harry Brook has declared himself ready to take on England\u2019s vacant Test captaincy following the retirement of Ben…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-518559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}