What is next for England cricket? Ben Stokes has gone, and Rob Key and Brendon McCullum must follow

After four years of some of the most spectacular peaks and troughs, Ben Stokes’ tenure as England captain is over, the Bazball philosophy that it was moulded on and the coach it was named after surely gone with him, as should be Rob Key’s time as Director of Cricket.

And what a bloody mess they will leave behind.

The Stokes captaincy era always promised to be a rollercoaster. The rebel without a cause, no stranger to scandal and with a temper that could tame lions. Stokes was a different beast to his predecessor and close friend, Joe Root, nothing like Alastair Cook, and the polar opposite of Andrew Strauss.

Perhaps it was always destined to end in tears. For a short while it had something. It was exciting and dangerous, and under Stokes’ inspiring leadership, England were good again. Test cricket in England was brought back to life in the summer of 2022, having seemingly been placed on life support after another Ashes drubbing Down Under the previous winter.

Back then, Stokes’ leadership was the boost English cricket needed and at his best, the tactical side of his captaincy was aggressive, agile, shrewd and inspiring.

Even Key and McCullum, appointed at the same time as head coach, appeared to fit the bill. McCullum wanted to free up the team after a spell of restrictions both on and off the field throughout the pandemic. Key, heavily influenced by the late Shane Warne, backed attacking cricket and bet the house on a coach and captain who fit the brief.

But Key is no Barney Curley, and his bet has not come in. His own leadership has been found wanting and he has continually failed to read the room. When the big series came along, against Australia and India, England were thumped away and unable to make home advantage count when they had it against the very best.

England are lucky to have not met South Africa in this format since that first summer of 2022, and Bazball was finally put to death on a sorry Monday at Trent Bridge as New Zealand wrapped up an impressive comeback series victory.

McCullum was a poor appointment. When handed the reins, he had no international coaching experience. His management of Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL that year had, at least from the outside, looked chaotic, and the results were poor.

There were better alternatives for a job of this magnitude then, and there are better alternatives four years later. McCullum must go, and Key can kindly turn off the lights behind him. England need new ideas, a new direction. Dare I say it, they need a new identity and a new brand of cricket.

So, what next? Or, who next?

To begin, for anyone who thinks Harry Brook should be the Test captain, I have a bridge to sell you. Better still, watch his innings on Sunday night. Whoever ends up making that call has the perfect get-out, in so much that captaining across all three formats is virtually impossible given England’s crammed schedule.

Such a decision ought to lay with a new head coach. Four years ago, I’d have given that job to Mickey Arthur who has an outstanding CV which includes taking Pakistan and South Africa to the top of the world in Test cricket, including overseeing a series win in Australia for the Proteas. England fans can only dream of such riches.

Arthur has been settled in England for a number of years and is currently head coach of Derbyshire, but Key’s obsession with Warne means the former was never a realistic option given Warne’s own criticism of Arthur’s methods when he then became coach of Australia. Interestingly, Michael Clarke, captain at the time, always had a different view of Arthur.

I suspect that ship has sailed, similarly with former Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie. But Gary Kirsten is an outstanding coach with a terrific record. The South African somehow lost out to Chris Silverwood when applying for the position in 2019, and the ECB would do well to reestablish lines of contact, armed with a few slices of humble pie.

Another option would be to seek out Andy Flower, who is currently basking in the glory of having masterminded back-to-back IPL titles for previous underachievers Royal Challengers Bengaluru. If you ask most who have worked with Flower, they will tell you that even now, he is the best coach in the world, and he helped create the best England cricket team in history in his first tenure as head coach.

Whether Flower would be interested in returning is another question, but England need to rebuild their house, starting with the foundations. That means Key goes, clearly, but a new head coach needs to be brought in, one with a proven track record, and who is smart.

That’s the problem with the Bazball era, one of many problems. I'm not sure the people in charge are smart people, and the team is lacking smart people. We keep hearing about how talented the playing group is, and I don’t disagree, but there are very few smart individuals there capable of playing consistently smart cricket when the big moments come.

That’s why England once again surrendered a position of dominance on Saturday, and batted so appallingly on Sunday evening. I have no issue with Stokes’ final international innings. It wreaked of a player whose trust in his own game had ebbed away, so he went down swinging. I get that.

We are told Brook is one of the best batsmen in the world, yet his innings was shocking. It was anything but smart and, sadly, this is nothing new. Nor is he alone in that. The examples of such batting, or off-the-field misdemeanours, are endless from the last four years. Playing members needing a midnight curfew, then some suggesting they didn't know it exists after a dust-up in a Chelsea nightclub. Things patently need to change.

A Kirsten or a Flower would surely bring that change, help get things back on track, perhaps with the steady hand of Joe Root as captain, just in the short-term. Further down the line, building blocks must be put in place for a better future.

Richard Dawson has done a remarkable job at Glamorgan and would be someone I’d like to see viewed as a future head coach. England would be wise to consider getting him involved in the set-up this winter, in collaboration with Glamorgan, of course, possibly for a few weeks of the tour of South Africa, watching and learning from a Kirsten or Flower. Or potentially stepping in for a white-ball game or series somewhere.

And if Root were to hold the fort as captain until after next summer’s Ashes, are we grooming Jacob Bethell as a future captain? Does someone like Ollie Pope come back at number six, where he ought to have batted all along, and get another crack at captaincy?

Or is there a young player in county cricket with the potential to do what Graeme Smith did for South Africa when becoming captain at just 22 years of age? Thomas Rew is a name we hear a lot about, or even a more experienced head like Haseeb Hameed who has done such a wonderful job at Nottinghamshire.

None of these feel like perfect options right now, but the legacy Key and McCullum will leave means good options are thin on the ground, and answers to some tough questions are hard to find.

It’s a bloody mess, and it’s time for someone to clean it up.