England’s Director of Cricket described the all-rounder as the “perfect No 2” but insisted he was “no shoo-in” to take the captaincy after Root.
And he admitted that if Root were to be injured on the eve of an Ashes series they would not rule out looking at other options such as throwing an Ashes SOS to Alastair Cook.
“Just as when Joe was made vice-captain, that doesn’t necessarily mean Ben is going to be a shoo-in to be England captain at some stage in the future,” he said.
“And I don’t think it would be right for me to say that, in absolutely every circumstance, Ben would definitely take over from Joe.”
Strauss admitted England would do their best to give Stokes as much leadership practise this year with a view to him establishing more compelling credentials for the top job.
“It is not an easy thing to give people leadership experience when they’re in the England team 12 months of the year. So of course, we’ll look for opportunities to be able to do that.
“But I think the way we’ve approached this is we’ve asked what we need in a vice captain and what will complement Joe as captain as well as possible.” Strauss also confirmed that Eoin Morgan is in no danger of being replaced by Root in white ball formats.
“When you have a captain for all formats you [can] almost inevitably start sleep-walking from one format to the other – so I still think there’s great value in having those two captains,” said Strauss.
“Eoin has done a fantastic job as one-day captain, and we’ve seen the change of method and philosophy in white-ball cricket – and how successful that’s been.” He added: “There’s certainly no reason why I’d want to upset that apple-cart at this stage.” ends
