Harry Brook says it ‘would be a privilege’ to succeed Stokes as England Test captain

Harry Brook has declared himself ready to take on England’s vacant Test captaincy following the retirement of Ben Stokes, saying it would be “a great honour” to be given the role and is open to being the country’s first leader to unite the blazers across all formats since Andrew Strauss did so briefly in 2009.

“It would be a privilege to do it, to captain England in the highest format of our game,” Brook said. “The pinnacle, I think it is. Playing Test cricket is the greatest thing that I’ve ever done in my life and it’s a dream, and something I’ve always wanted to do since I could speak. Look, it’s not up to me, that decision – but if I got offered it, then I’d be happy to take it.”

Brook already captains England’s 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 – and the landscape of cricket profoundly changed – since England last had a single captain across all formats, and in that period Strauss played only a single T20.

“I think it would be a tough job, but everything’s tough in cricket. It’s a hard sport,” Brook said. “Look, I’ve committed completely to England cricket. I’ve said that I don’t 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.”

Brook’s 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. “I think everybody knows that I like going out there and trying to be fearless and putting the pressure back on the opposition,” Brook said. “That’s something I’d have to think about further down the line if that was to arise. The decision isn’t up to me.”

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 “our main focus was on the Test match” he and McCullum have been able to do some planning for this series over the past few weeks.

One thing they have put plans in place for is the potential arrival in senior international cricket of the batting prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, top-scorer in this year’s Indian Premier League with an astonishing 776 runs, at a strike rate of 237.30. “We’ve got our tactics and hopefully they work,” Brook said of the 15-year-old. “There’s been a lot of digging behind the scenes to see what we can do to try and stop them from playing their best cricket.”

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. “This is very private, we can’t let everyone know about what combinations we are going to play and let the opponents know what is going to happen,” he said. “He’s a brilliant prodigy and whenever he gets the opportunity to play he’ll definitely do brilliant.” England, don’t mind letting their opponents know what is going to happen and named their team on Tuesday.

England and India last met in a thrilling T20 World Cup semi-final in Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium in March, won by the hosts on their way to retaining their title. Brook duly declared these opponents “the best side in the world” 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.

“It wasn’t embarrassing but it was depressing for us, because we definitely didn’t expect Ireland to play that well,” Iyer said. “Kudos 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’re looking forward to an intense and challenging series.”