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Four weeks. Twenty-eight days to find a captain, get a head coach and restructure the top order.

For the England and Wales Cricket Board, the countdown to the opening Test against Pakistan on 19 August at Headingley has less the feel of a summer fixture list and more the sensation of a crash course.
After the stunning resignation of Ben Stokes, the shock exit of Brendon McCullum following a 2-1 series defeat by New Zealand and a summer of upheaval, England have been dealt another selection crisis.
Jacob Bethell, the promoted number three, has been ruled out of The Hundred with a right knee injury suffered during the one-day series against India.

While the ECB has been careful about discussing the precise nature of the problem, the optics are damaging to the game’s image.
The captain of the Birmingham Phoenix is ​​to miss the remainder of the competition to have the knee drained, rather than to have it rested.

If Bethell is unable to perform in his new role due to the injury, England will enter a new era without their figurehead. If he does recover, there is no selection committee or head coach to guide him into the No. 3rd position.
Either way, England’s options are undeniably limited, and each carries its own set of risks.

The candidates for Jacob Bethell

Option 1: Ollie Pope

Without a head coach to project a visionary philosophy upon the game, the safest option is usually the most effective.

Ollie Pope was the man in possession before Bethell’s rise up the order. Dropped in the winter following a thankless Ashes tour in which he scored 24 in six Tests, the 27-year-old’s Test career (64 matches) has been one long parenthesis. To recall him now could be seen as positively reactionary by a management in dire need of new blood.

Modern-day cricket is a game of momentum and momentum only, however, and Pope has been in fine form in his Surrey colors this summer. A career average of 56.66 from seven County Championship innings has been built on solid technique and valuable experience. He knows a bit about the pressures of international cricket and will provide a welcome calming influence on a young batting order.

The Alternative: Surrey team-mate Dan Lawrence is another proven performer, averaging a very healthy 65 in first-class matches this summer. The problem is that, like Pope, he has been operating mainly from No 4 this term. At No 3 against Sri Lanka two summers ago, he managed a single 35.

Option 2: Ben McKinney

New coach, new captain, new era; what better opportunity to look to the future

Durham’s Ben McKinney looks a strong candidate to be among the new crop of England’s emerging talents given the chance to impress. The southpaw has averaged a very credible 52 per innings in county cricket this summer, and has the class and temperament to be a modern player for the future.

McKinney’s case is further enhanced by the fact that newly appointed ECB director Marcus North knows him well from his playing days at Durham. With Pakistan being a relatively weak batting side, it is a good opportunity for an emerging player to gain some much-needed experience at a famous venue such as Headingley.

The alternative to McKinney would be Asa Tribe, who was poised to open for England at the start of this summer before being usurped by Emilio Gay. However, a summer average of 31, with no centuries in the Championship, means that a call-up to the Test squad would be a risky move.

Option 3: Joe Root

The same old debate is out again, about whether England should just move their best batter up the order.

If Root were to be installed as captain following on from Stokes’s likely exit, then it would be impossible for him to move to number three, because that would require moving one of the other two to fill the vacancy at four. But if Brook is to fill the captaincy vacancy no matter who becomes head coach, then the idea becomes at least theoretically feasible.

Nevertheless, moving him remains a very high-risk option; he is England’s best run scorer, and it would create two gaping holes in the batting order by removing the most reliable batter from his favored position and inserting another in a position where he is less comfortable. It is an option, but a very poorly thought-out one.

Option 4: Rehan Ahmed

It is the boldest gamble in this particular chess game. A promotion up the batting order for the 21-year-old leg-spinning all-rounder.

England need balance in this new era without Stokes and have so far deployed Ahmed at number eight in his five Test appearances (bar two games as a nightwatchman) while his domestic form at number three for Leicestershire has been nothing short of spectacular. The pace bowler has scored six County Championship centuries from number three since joining the club at the start of last season, including a magnificent hundred against Yorkshire last month.

Unconventional? Certainly. Yet, by pinning Ahmed in the top seven, England solved their seam bowling workload dilemma without over-relying on an auxiliary frontline spinner.

England’s final selection will depend on whether Bethell’s knee clears up for the Headingley opener, but one way or the other, a pattern must be established for the post-McCullum era.

Recalling Ollie Pope represents an excessively conservative statement from a management looking to project itself as a new era, while pushing Joe Root up the order and/or throwing Rehan Ahmed into the number three role carries too many tactical implications for a provisional coaching staff to feel comfortable.

England should show some courage by inserting Ben McKinney into the number three slot and get on with the business of the new era.