Martin Speight, the coach who turned Harry Brook into one of the most exciting batsmen in world cricket, believes his former star pupil can become a future England captain.
Yorkshire’s Brook has been getting his first taste of captaincy leading the Northern Superchargers in The Hundred and, significantly, his coach is Freddie Flintoff, who is being tipped to take charge of the England team in the future.
This raises the possibility of Flintoff and Brook becoming a coach and captain double act for England.
Speight, a groundbreaking batsman in his own right with Durham and Sussex, was Brook’s coach at Sedbergh School in Cumbria where 6.30am net sessions helped turn ‘a little tubby fat kid’ into an England batting sensation.
It has been Brook’s remarkable impact in all formats of international cricket – T20, One Day and Test match – that has seen him put forward as a potential future England captain.
Last summer, the Yorkshireman etched his name in World cricket history, becoming the fastest player of all time to score 1000 runs in balls faced (1058) in Test cricket.
During BBC’s coverage of The Hundred, former England Test captain Michael Vaughan explained why Brook would make a strong national captain: “His captaincy is just a little bit out of the box, he’s very much the England way, I think he’ll be captaining the Three Lions in not the too distant future.”
Speight is also convinced the 25-year-old could handle a captaincy role and exclusively told talkSPORT: “Harry does read the game very well and he’s not scared to try things and think outside the box.
“He has got a really good cricket brain on him and he likes winning. When you look at the white ball situation in this country there aren’t too many people sticking their hands up [for captaincy].
“Harry certainly talks really highly about Freddie and has a great relationship with him. Harry said Freddie’s an amazing guy to have around and I think he’s probably got a similar sort of aura and approach to the game as (England coach) Brendon McCullum.
“Harry has very much bought into and been a recipient of the McCullum and Ben Stokes England culture where they back their players. They have created an environment and a changing room where the players feel as though they can play their game – they don’t look scared.
“While Harry is ultra-competitive, he’s pretty relaxed and chilled, he just wants people to go out and express themselves – a bit like the culture in the England changing room.”
Brook has taken the international arena by storm, particularly the Test format. In just 15 Test matches, he has raised the bat on 13 occasions (five hundreds and eight fifties) with the best current average in the world, 59.91 runs per innings.
Brook’s development was shaped by wicket keeper/batsman Speight whose own career saw him hit a first class English county century in 62 balls in 1992 that was the fastest for seven years, until a remarkable Flintoff century in 61 balls in 1999.
Speight, now Technical Director of Cricket at Repton School, is credited with many of the unconventional shots that are now regularly seen in one day cricket, but when he was playing it counted against him gaining any higher honours.
“I was the guy who would go in and try and score pretty quickly and change the impetus of the game,” he explained.
“The problem back then; it was perceived, if you wanted to go to the very highest level, obviously you would need the mental skills and physical skills but it was thought that you had to play in a certain way. I think today it’s about how many runs you score and the more attacking you are, the more chance you have.”
So how did Speight’s coaching turn Brook into the star he is today? “When Harry started he was just a good player, a little tubby fat kid that couldn’t run and was very good off his pads and played the short ball well.
“He wasn’t a particularly good athlete at the start, so he would spend two hours a week with the athletics coach who taught him to run. But he would also come in every morning at 6:30am and train every morning, technically he just wanted to be as perfect as he could.
“Everyone goes on ‘he’s just so talented’, yeah he’s got talent but he works hard, if not harder than anyone else. He was a really good player [when he joined Sedbergh] but within a month I knew he would be an exceptional player.”
However, like all world class batsmen, Brook is constantly striving for excellence and Speight remains his ‘go to’ advisor.
“I still chat with him regularly on WhatsApp and normally have a session with him between game formats,” added Speight who also advises several county players.
“The last one [with Harry] was after the T20 World Cup, heading into the Test series vs West Indies earlier this summer.
“I suppose now I’m more of a person he comes back to ask advice, play around with ideas, etc and occasionally check over his technique to make sure it’s all as it should be.”