Gambler Key plays the odds in naming Brook captain

Rob Key once played poker until 3am with the late great Shane Warne.

Next week he will celebrate three years in the role of managing director of England men's cricket - a period during which he has rarely been averse to a gamble.

A fiery all-rounder picked as captain, a Test coach appointed who had never led in the red-ball game and a host of youngsters given their debuts despite limited domestic records.

However, Key has played the odds in appointing Harry Brook as white-ball captain. There is a reason you are told to never risk more than you can afford to lose.

Giving the job to Ben Stokes, as Key suggested he might, would have been the equivalent to carefully building a profit across a night at the roulette table, only to throw your earnings on a lucky number with closing time in sight.

England have been building for this winter's Ashes series ever since Key and Stokes took post.

Key has wisely decided that, with the first Test in Perth seven months away, adding the white-ball captaincy to his injury-ravaged talisman's workload was one risk he was not willing to take.

Once he did so, Brook was always the obvious choice to replace Jos Buttler.

Domestic captains outside of the current XI, the likes of Sam Billings or James Vince, were considered but a captain must be worth their place in the team.

Joe Root was not interested, others not secure enough in their position. In some ways, Brook was the only option.

In the 26-year-old Yorkshireman, England will get another captain in the image of Stokes and Brendon McCullum - their all-format, all-powerful coach.

The similarities are in style - Brook has been a leading disciple of the pair's Test revolution - and in Brook's grounding too.

His cricket education was finished at Sedbergh School but, rather than the public-school system, he learned the game at Burley-in-Wharfedale's Hodson Park - where there is a bench bearing his late grandfather's name.

Brook, like Stokes and McCullum, is street-smart - hardened by playing in Yorkshire's tough men's leagues by the age of 13 - and rough around the edges.

He is straight-talking, often a man of few words in interviews - some might say a classic Yorkshire trait.

At the Indian Premier League he said he was happy to "shut up" local fans who had been "slagging him off" and, when standing in as England skipper last year, said "who cares">