The Cricket Captains of England, 1979-2025
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 192
Author: Marks, Vic
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Rating: 4 stars
Vic Marks made his First Class debut back in 1975, and then spent the next fifteen summers playing cricket, as well as four winters. He was a good enough all rounder (right hand bat and decent purveyor of off spin) to earn six Test caps, and he played in 34 ODIs.
After he left the field of play Marks became, if anything, even better known by virtue of his long tenure as a summariser on BBC Test Match Special, and being cricket correspondent for the Observer and then the Guardian, proper newspapers if I might be so bold.
There have been a few books along the way too, five reposing on my shelves and I suspect that isn’t quite all. I have also had the pleasure of listening to Marks speak on a couple of occasions in recent months, both primarily involving his talking about this, his latest book.
And now I have read the book and it clearly reinforces the message that his broadcasting and writing imparts that Marks understands as well as anyone the skills needed to be a successful captain. I also, particularly as a result of hearing him speak, fully understand now why Marks’ one summer as Somerset captain wasn’t a great success. He didn’t of course, by then, have a great side at his disposal, but the simple truth is that hugely knowledgeable about the game as he is, Marks is just too decent and self-effacing a bloke to have been a great leader himself.
But that doesn’t alter the fact that he is ideally placed to tell the story of the England captaincy since 1979. He has either played with or against the men involved, or he has watched them and talked to and about them for many hours. Everything he writes he can say with an authority that, on this subject at least, simply cannot be equalled.
Despite that when he is talking about the book Marks does so by starting with, effectively, an apology for the fact that he is not Alan Gibson. For those who don’t know Gibson was, like Marks, a highly talented writer and broadcaster who wrote the original book, The Cricket Captains of England, which took this particular story from 1877 to 1977*. Unlike Marks however Gibson was not a First Class cricketer, and the careers of a goodly number of the men he wrote about were concluded before he was even born.
Personally I am simply not going to buy into Marks’ apology, which I have now heard twice, for not being Alan Gibson. His task was rather trickier than Gibson’s, and much more open to the sort of scrutiny that brings criticism and disagreement with it. He has however navigated the journey from Mike Brearley to Ben Stokes with great skill, eloquence and, where appropriate, a touch of humour.
In terms of how the book is set out it is perhaps important to make the point that it is the story of the evolution of the job rather than a series of pen portraits of individual captains, something which would have been much easier to write, and much less interesting. That said one man does get the last chapter to himself, current incumbent Ben Stokes.
In closing Gibson’s book concluded that I doubt very much that Test cricket will survive for another hundred years in anything like it’s current form. Marks references that observation in his own closing paragraph and responds with he may still be right but I would be hard pressed to name anyone in the last few decades who has done more than Ben Stokes to keep a format, still beloved by so many, alive.
The Cricket Captains of England, 1979-2025** was published just prior to the start of the current series against India. With England 2-1 up I heard Marks make the observation that if England succeed in Australia this winter there will be a case for describing Stokes as England’s finest ever captain. As a die hard nominator of Douglas Jardine for that title I found myself unable to agree with Marks at the time but, four days later and having just watched Stokes go to his century at Old Trafford I realise that, as in every other respect, Marks is of course correct.
*Published in 1979 this was one of the very first books reviewed on Cricketweb, by The Mac more than 17 years ago. For those wanting to see what all the fuss was about Fairfield have just republished it. The new book faithfully reproduces the old together with a few statistics, what amounts at the end to some footnotes recording where the last half century has brought fresh information to light, and a much better selection of photographs than the original contained.
**Both books are available via the publisher’s new website, here.
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