{"id":54418,"date":"2025-08-09T06:36:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T06:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/54418\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T06:36:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T06:36:24","slug":"michael-vaughan-warns-england-dont-let-ollie-pope-lead-in-the-ashes-cricket-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/54418\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Vaughan warns England: &#8216;Don&#8217;t let Ollie Pope lead in the Ashes&#8217; | Cricket News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/123189239.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Vaughan warns England: 'Don't let Ollie Pope lead in the Ashes'\" title=\"Ollie Pope (Getty Images) \" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/>Ollie Pope (Getty Images)  NEW DELHI: Former England cricketer <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/michael-vaughan\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Vaughan<\/a> has criticised <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/ollie-pope\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ollie Pope<\/a>\u2019s captaincy in the final Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy against India, which England lost by a narrow margin of 6 runs. With <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/ben-stokes\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Stokes<\/a> ruled out due to injury, Pope stepped in as captain, but England couldn\u2019t hold off India\u2019s fightback, resulting in a 2-2 series draw.Vaughan pointed out that while Pope thrives as a vice-captain, he lacks the leadership qualities needed to lead the team in high-pressure situations. He proposed Harry Brook as a better alternative should Stokes be unavailable for the upcoming Ashes series, set to begin in three months.<\/p>\n<p>Ben Stokes press conference: On Mohammed Siraj, Chris Woakes batting with injury, 2-2 result<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t laud how good some vice-captains are. (Marcus) Trescothick was the best vice captain. I think Ollie Pope is a brilliant vice-captain. But he&#8217;s not a captain. And by giving him the captaincy, I can see it a mile off. He&#8217;s not a natural leader out in the middle,&#8221; Vaughan said on the Stick To Cricket podcast.He further raised concerns about Stokes&#8217; injury record and the implications it could have in a long Ashes series.&#8221;I saw that last year against Sri Lanka. I have seen it again this week. Say you get to Perth and Ben Stokes, the shoulder or you know, his body&#8217;s in bits. Anything could happen with Ben. Fingers crossed he&#8217;s fine but just say you go to Perth and Ben can&#8217;t play. I can&#8217;t have Ollie Pope walk in as skipper. But I can have Harry Brook because I see a natural leader,&#8221; he added.Stokes, meanwhile, addressed his decision to pull out of the final Test at The Oval, citing fitness and risk management.&#8221;We took as long as we could to make the decision,&#8221; Stokes said before the match. &#8220;I came down [to the Oval] this morning to give myself every chance just to play as a batter \u2013 bowling was ruled out as soon as we got the scan results. It&#8217;s one of those where weighing up the risk and reward, the risk was way too high. Hearing where it could head to, it wasn&#8217;t something that was worth taking a risk on. I wouldn&#8217;t expect to put any of my players at risk of an injury like this. So I&#8217;ll start rehabbing now and focus on what we&#8217;ve got coming up in the winter. Once this series was done I was feet up anyway, so it doesn&#8217;t make too much difference.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ollie Pope (Getty Images) NEW DELHI: Former England cricketer Michael Vaughan has criticised Ollie Pope\u2019s captaincy in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[10086,1723,1721,1722,29892,19030,20807,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-54418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-ashes-series","9":"tag-ben-stokes","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-england-cricket","12":"tag-england-vs-india-series","13":"tag-michael-vaughan","14":"tag-ollie-pope","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}