More than a stand-in? Pope has three weeks to prove he is Stokes’s heir

‘He has the soul of a vice-president.” Eugene McCarthy’s barb stuck to Walter Mondale during the US presidential race of 1984, and may have been one of the factors why Mondale never acceded to the presidency. Damned with faint praise, voters may have thought he was not cut out for the top job; not cut out to be the No1.
While there are endless tomes written about leadership, there is remarkably little literature on the role of the deputy, the No2 or the vice-captain. Richard Hytner, himself a former chief-executive, as well as a No2, wrote a book about deputies (from which the Mondale anecdote is taken) entitled Consiglieri: Leading from the Shadows, but this is an exception.
Ollie Pope, appointed consiglieri to Ben Stokes before the Ashes in 2023, steps out of the shadows this week to lead the England Test side against Sri Lanka in Stokes’s absence. His performance in the field and with the bat, his body language and the decisions he makes will be scrutinised. We will all become amateur psychologists for the week: is he a leader in the making, or is he a Mondale, better suited to being a No2? It will be an intriguing subplot to the series.
Hytner, by the way, was writing in praise of the deputy. It’s an essential role, but not one about which there is always much thought given. There are two types of No2: the genuine deputy, happiest in the shadows, someone who will clean up the mess, act as a bridge between leaders, nipping problems in the bud, but not ambitious for the limelight. Then there is the leader-in-waiting.
In sport, in cricket, most vice-captains are the latter sort for three reasons. The first is that injury is more likely to render obsolete a leader in sport than in other walks of life such as, say, business. A vice-captain must be ready to lead, as Pope has done from time to time when Stokes has left the field. How would a player react were they given the job of vice-captain but overlooked when the moment came?
The second reason is precisely because the role of a deputy is undervalued and given too little attention and forethought. Most teams have a vice-captain — Harry Brook has been named as Pope’s this week — and it’s usually a case of those in charge thinking simply about who is the most likely to be the next man in charge. Give him the deputy’s job, then.
The third reason is the rise of backroom staff. In the days when a captain ran a county side alone by decree — going back maybe forty years — the role of a vice-captain was crucial. But with coaches and support staff on tap, many of the issues that a harried leader might overlook, that were once the domain of the No2, are now swept up by the busybodies in tracksuits.
In English cricket, it is also true that the role of the vice-captain may have been ignored because for three decades or so, England captains, usually batsmen, have had remarkable fitness records. I was ever-present between 1993 and 1998; Alec Stewart was ever-present; Andrew Strauss missed two matches only, in Bangladesh, while resting; Alastair Cook was never injured during his long reign, and Joe Root missed just one match for the birth of his child — when Stokes took over in the summer of 2020.
That match, incidentally, showed how hard it is to step in as a temporary replacement. Root had left Stokes a written note saying “do it your way” but there was no dramatic shift in style — how could there be, inheriting Root’s players, like Dom Sibley and Rory Burns? England scored around three runs an over; Stokes himself struck at 44 runs per 100 balls in the first innings and 58 in the second. And England lost. The shift would come when Stokes was given the job permanently.
I cannot think of a time when a deputy has stepped in and suddenly gone rogue. There is no chance of Pope doing that, especially not with Stokes present — Pope sits next to him in the Old Trafford dressing room — as he will be throughout the series. As Pope admitted in his pre-match press conference: the team is Stokes’s and the messages will be the same, albeit expressed in his own voice, in his own way.
The only captains in a 30-year time frame that have suffered injuries were Nasser Hussain, who missed a handful of matches with broken fingers — a combination of Stewart, myself and Mark Butcher, for one match, stepped in — and, more seriously, Michael Vaughan, whose knee flared up in 2006-07, to the point where England were without a permanent captain for a year or so. It was a period that showed how much Vaughan was missed.
Marcus Trescothick captained for two matches in Vaughan’s absence, but then a battle developed in that hiatus between Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Strauss. Flintoff was Vaughan’s nominated deputy but was himself injured for the Sri Lanka series in the summer of 2006, leaving the deputy’s deputy, Strauss, to take charge. Strauss did well enough to be thrust into being a contender for the captaincy of the Ashes tour of 2006-07. The selectors were split and Duncan Fletcher had the casting vote, which went to Flintoff. England were whitewashed.
Whoever took over from Vaughan for that series was stuffed, given the strength of the Australia team in home conditions, but it also highlighted the problem in following an exceptional captain, as Vaughan undoubtedly was. Having watched Stokes for two years now, admiringly, that thought has struck me often: pity the man that must follow him.
With Brook having been appointed deputy to Pope, it is likely to be one of these two who will eventually step up permanently when the time arrives. They come over as completely different characters and cricketers and it will be fascinating to see how it pans out. Brook enjoyed his first stint of senior captaincy with Northern Superchargers in the Hundred recently.
At least Pope has got his first call right. In choosing five bowlers and playing Matthew Potts instead of Jordan Cox, he has made the aggressive but undoubtedly right option. A four-man attack would have put too much pressure on the fast bowlers, Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson, and the young spinner, Shoaib Bashir, whereas now, with Chris Woakes and Potts to hand, the quick bowlers can bowl short, sharp bursts. At Old Trafford, it is likely that will be a decisive factor.
Whether Pope will succeed Stokes eventually on a permanent basis could rest on the initial impression he offers over the next three weeks. A checklist for him to tick off would be: a winning series, some runs (very important for a new captain) and a sense that responsibility sits lightly on his shoulders. A sense, in other words, that he has the soul of a captain rather than a vice-captain. We shall see.
Dan Lawrence, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (captain), Joe Root, Harry Brook (vice-captain), Jamie Smith (wicketkeeper), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Matthew Potts, Mark Wood, Shoaib Bashir.
First Test, Emirates Old TraffordWednesday, 11amTV Sky Sports