Andrew Strauss admits that power trip of Twenty20 is not for him

Andrew Strauss is relaxed about losing the England captaincy for the ICC World Twenty20 but hopes to lead the team to victory over West Indies and Australia this summer in both Test and one-day cricket.
Speaking at the launch of the county season at Lord’s, Strauss said that he has “no problem handing over the reins to someone else” for the 16-day tournament in June. “They asked my opinion on it and I felt that it was not my strongest form of the game by any means,” he said. “Whoever captains any team should be worth their place. I didn’t feel that I was one of the strongest 11 Twenty20 players in the country.”
There was expectation that Strauss, whose highest Twenty20 score since 2003 is 33, would be named in the 30-man provisional squad announced on Monday after he made 79 off 61 balls as England won the fourth one-day international against West Indies last month, but Strauss demurred.
“That innings proves there’s more to my game than being a stodgy Test opener,” he said. “I hope I can continue doing a job in 50-over cricket, but in Twenty20 you need the team to be scoring 170 to 180, and to do that you need power players, which is not necessarily a strength of mine.” While he was named as captain in all forms of the game for the tour to the Caribbean, the fact that he played the only Twenty20 match in a shirt borrowed from Matt Prior, with Prior’s name taped over, suggested that Strauss was not wholly part of England’s Twenty20 plans.
Strauss said that missing the World Twenty20 would give him time to prepare for the Ashes series. “If there is an opportunity to play some championship matches I’d jump at it,” he said. Middlesex play two four-day games during the tournament, away to Essex and Gloucestershire.
A stand-in captain will be named on May 1, when the squad is whittled down to 15 names. Strauss gave a boost to Rob Key’s hopes by praising the job he had done with Kent. “Key is a good operator and definitely one of the names on the list,” he said.
“The fact that some of the county players have played more Twenty20 helps them. It is a very different format and you need to plan for that. Whoever captains has to definitely be worth their place in the XI.” He questioned whether Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood, his regular team-mates, had the hunger for the role. “If someone is going to be good at the job, they have got to want the job,” he said.
Dwayne Bravo has been ruled out of West Indies’ two Tests against England next month after failing to recover from ankle surgery. Daren Powell, the fast bowler, and Ryan Hinds, the middle-order batsman, were left out of a 17-man tour party that includes three uncapped players in Nelon Pascal, a fast bowler, Andrew Richardson, a medium-pace bowler, and Dale Richards, a batsman.
Source:the times