Arthur Crabtree wrote:England's results have gone into a dramatic U turn since Stokes became skipper. Why is that? It feels too sudden and extreme to be a normal fluctuation of outcomes, or catching the opposition at the right time.
I think its easy to forget that England's previous administration were a joke. We had a national selector picked for the job because he wrote a book about baseball and happened to open the batting once with the Director, a captain who was uninspiring, a head coach way out of his depth, his junior coaches smoking cigars in hotels at 6am and getting arrested, a Director of Cricket who's landmark idea was retiring two generational quality players and replacing them with dross.... I can go on.
Of course, the purge of all these idiots no doubt contributed. How much of this rapid turn around can be solely attributed to one person or the other is up for debate, and in many ways impossible. Even between McCullum and Stokes, who came up with the idea and implemented it? I mean, it was tagged "Bazball"... which suggests the press think its more MuCullum.
Stokes did captain the side in 2020 in Root's absence, and I believe we lost to a West Indies side that was the worst ranked team to have taken a test in England in over 20 years. So one would suggest if Stokes was such an instant tactical, inspirational genius, even then he couldnt do it without other people.
Of course, I really like his style of captaincy. Its so uncomplicated.
All of this is by the wayside.... its an individual award for best player.