Yesterday I wrote about how appointing Alastair Cook as ODI captain is a wrong decision. Since then, the news has broken that Stuart Broad is to be named as the new T20 captain in a double announcement. If anything, this makes more of a mockery of the original decision to appoint Cook.
As soon as Strauss indicated that he was to step away from limited over internationals, the powers that be should have looked to unite the limited over captaincy. As stirling a job as Paul Collingwood has done, it's widely believed that thanks to a dramatic loss of form and a very suspect knee Collingwood has played his last for England. Collingwood did a very good job as a T20 captain in what was effectively a split captaincy, but with a more obvious divide set to occur between Strauss's test captaincy and whoever takes over the limited over side, making a singular appointment should have been the number one priority. Naming three captains, all with different ideas, strategies, and methods, is unforgivable.
I've already made my thoughts fairly clear about appointing a captain who hasn't been part of the squad for the past 14 months, and by appointing Broad as a T20 captain, the selectors are basically saying Cook isn't good enough to play T20 matches, thus splitting the captaincy further and potentially leading to a ship where three different men are trying to lead their own way, creating obvious fractions in the group.
While my Twitter timeline has been filled by furious Stuart Broad hate (remember, I quite like him), as disappointed and upset as many of the cricketing blogosphere would be, I'd prefer to see Broad named as ODI and T20 captain, just as splitting the captaincy three ways cannot work. A two-way split often leads to trouble, but a three way split is a disaster waiting to happen. I just hope England reconsider, very, very quickly.
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