Interesting choice to have a bowler as captain. Flintoff said that he felt there's too much to do if you're thinking about your own bowling as well as captaincy. Probably not as important in T20 though and there weren't a lot of other options.
I think you need a captain who hasn't got to do a lot of bowling, but who does bowl a bit more often than most - like a Gooch. I think England need to sit down and think through their tactics, they're too predictable in terms of bowling changes and they end up with the pick of their bowlers not bowling out far too often.
I think someone like Collingwood is a good choice of captain, but knowing who is sharp enough upstairs to make captaincy and other duties balance isn't easy to judge. I've always believed the captain in any sport should not be a star player, let them focus on their game. Was arguably England's greatest captain ever, Michael Vaughan, just kidding I mean Mike Brearley a star player? His Test average was ordinary to say the least, few question him as captain though.
Not so convinced Gatting was a great captain, wasn't his Ashes triumph one of his very few wins as captain? Gooch did a good job for my money, captained at a time when not losing to West Indies in a match was like thrashing them these days in terms of achievement - probably more of one. He captained before Caddick, Cork and Gough were established in the side, the crime being they didn't seem to be played as the effective trio they should have proven often enough at a time when plenty of bowlers were tried, most failed. Gooch didn't have such luxuries, Fraser was always injured and the likes of DeFreitas, Foster, Lewis, Capel etc never lived up to hopes come expectations (varying degrees of success/failure)
Athers was a good leader by example, not convinced he was a good captain. Negative Nasser I think it was in charge when we beat West Indies, that when they had Lara, Chanderpaul, Walsh and Ambrose fighting much on their own and we just saw off the two bowlers and picked off the supporting cast to win - helped by some dreadful collapses, one of which TV couldn't keep up with to get all their ads in
He did cheat us to victory in Sri Lanka, caught twice off the face of the bat and did not walk, going on to a hundred. In Pakistan we ground out a win thanks mainly to a collapse from the home side and playing many times more positively in chasing down 176 off 44 overs (?) in the dark.
Maybe we've had captains more suited to Tests than ODIs since 1992, then again I always maintain captaincy in Tests is a walk in the park and doesn't require much captaincy. Perhaps that backs up my assertion about Gooch, leading us to the final in 1992 and wasn't he the one who carried us to the final in 1987? (115 ? against India was it in the semi?)
I think the ODI captain needs to be someone only picked for ODIs, someone who has experience of playing in county one-dayers which the Test players miss a lot of. If they captain their county even better.