Vaughan: 'Collingwood could have been Test captain'

Date released: 3 February 2009

In the third and final excerpt from our exclusive interview: former England captain Michael Vaughan talks about the England captaincy.

• Listen to Vaughan's thoughts on the England captaincy (6.9 MB)

Vaughan is rated as one of England best ever captains, having won more matches than any of his predecessors.

Lords.org gleaned his views on: Kevin Pietersen's short reign; current captain, Andrew Strauss and much more.

Captaincy plans

Captain's plan: Collingwood was being readied for Test captaincy "It was working well with me and Colly [Paul Collingwood] - the whole plan was for Colly to progress and to take my position as the Test captain afterwards. There was a succession plan there but it obviously didn't work out.

"Colly decided enough was enough and that put all those plans in the bin.

"I was surprised when Colly stepped down. As I said, he was the succession plan but things change.

"No-one has come out of it any good at all: the team; Kev [Pietersen]; Peter [Moores]; the ECB. What's important is, now it's happened, it's been a bit messy, we have to move forward.

Vaughan on Strauss

"Andrew Strauss, I believe, will be a very, very good England captain."

"Andy Flower is interim coach at the minute - he has a great chance to forge that relationship with Straussy.

"Over the next month or so we'll see if we look a better unit for it. The only way you put these issues to bed is by winning games of cricket.

Past & present: Vaughan and Strauss "Andrew Strauss could be a great captain; Andy Flower could be a great coach - win a couple of games and everything will be forgotten.

"Strauss is a good leader, good around people which is very important. I think he'll man-manage situations and players very well.

"He's obviously at the top of his game. People will say he's under a lot of pressure with the situation but he's probably got it at a nice time.

"He's in great form and he's got the England captaincy in a messy situation so whatever he does, it may look a lot better than before.

"He's got a clean slate and he will get exactly what he wants. The captain shouldn't get everything that he wants but he should get the majority of them because it's his philosophy on the game which will come over to the players and the public.

Split captaincy

"It's exactly the right decision [to give Strauss captaincy of both the Test and one-day teams] at the moment to have stability around the team with what's gone on.

"When you first become England captain it's important that you do both to generate that stability and get your philosophy over to the team.

"It'd be very difficult to start the captaincy just as the Test captain with someone else doing the one-day team.

"Straussy will be honest - he'll probably only be in the one-day side for a short time to make sure he gets his methods across and then he'll have somebody to take over the one-day captaincy.

"How soon we don't know - Straussy may do very well in the one-day side.

"If he has a great series in the Caribbean he might carry on - but either way I think it's very important we have just one leader at the moment, that's crucial.

Removing excuses

Vaughan: 'Players must make big decisions for themselves' "I said when I took over the England captaincy I wanted eleven captains - I think every single player should be thinking like a captain.

"I think that's important, that players make decisions about the game; about their training.

"You can look at it like share prices: If you want your share price to go up you have to prepare yourself exactly how you know you need to be prepared to get the best out of yourself. If you don't do that your share price goes down.

"If they're making the wrong decisions you don't get in the team - they lose the biggest carrot of them all: being in the England team.

"The more you allow the players to do, the more excuses you take away from them - I think that's very important in high-level sport.

"The more people you have around the more excuses you allow players to have. It's important players make big decisions for themselves - it's their career.