England cricket: Brendon McCullum does not rule out splitting white-ball captaincy

Batter Harry Brook appears the favourite to replace Buttler, given he was appointed vice-captain in January and led in Buttler’s absence last year against Australia.

But appointing him would bring issues because Brook is a regular in the Test side.

He would either have to rest in some white-ball series, an approach England have regularly used, or take on a heavy workload around his Test commitments.

One solution would be splitting the white-ball captaincy but England have not had three captains since Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook and Stuart Broad held the roles in the early 2010s.

“It could definitely work, I don’t see why not,” England bowler Chris Woakes told the Test Match Special podcast.

“I feel we are in a stage in the cricket landscape where that can be the way forward.

“The formats are very different. Extremely different. 50-over is not just an extended T20 game. It’s not, there are more games within the game, which is closer to Test cricket and being able to do things for longer.”

Liam Livingstone and Phil Salt have also both captained England in white-ball cricket over the past year. Another option would be to bring in a player who captains in domestic cricket but is not currently part of the side.

England wicketkeeper Sam Billings captained Oval Invincibles to victory in The Hundred last year but has not played for England since November 2022.

James Vince, whose last international was in March 2023, has had success as Hampshire captain while Sam Curran has captained in the Indian Premier League but was dropped by England last year.

Asked if England could bring in such a candidate, McCullum said: “Give us a couple of weeks to work it all out, sort of digest what’s happened over the past month and a half, and then we will start to plot and plan our way forward from there.”