England Captains

Not so much nowadays when the captaincy appears to be given on a long term basis but in the recent past when captaincy changed hands on a regular basis, which England test side turned out the greatest number of captains?

The Brearley, Gooch, Gower, Gatting, Botham era springs to mind as a candidate. Any suggestions?

Think you may just be spot on with regard to the Brearley side.

Some of the older chaps will no doubt fill you in on the captaincy merits of Ken Barrington et al, though.

The 1988 Test series V West Indies springs to my mind, when England used Mike Gatting at the start in the first test, before he got the boot with John Emburey getting the captaincy for the second and third tests. Emburey then either got dropped or was injured which meant that remarkably Chris Cowdrey got the England captaincy job for the 4th test at Leeds. Cowdrey himself got the boot for the 5th and final test at the Oval which meant that Graham Gooch got the captaincy.

Didn't know about that, gboycott, nice one! Tumultuous times!

Fists of Fury wrote:Some of the older chaps will no doubt fill you in on the captaincy merits of Ken Barrington et al, though.

On cue, one incident from the 1950s suggests Barrington was not 100% cut out for captaincy....

"With five other members of the team he 'kidnapped' Idris Begh the Karachi jeweller and umpire whose decisions they thought were heavily biased. They poured a bucket of water over him in their apartments and he was laughed at by them and two members of the Pakistani team who happened to witness the event. Begh complained to the Pakistani captain Abdul Kardar and the matter became public, with the crowd chanting "Go home MCC" on the last day of the game. The President of the MCC Lord Alexander offered to recall the tour and the press called for the culprits to be barred from international cricket, but Howard managed to smooth things down and the tour was completed."