Lord's ringmaster Rob Key has revealed England’s duds made such a hash of the Champions Trophy that they could ask Ben Stokes to return to white-ball cricket as captain. After the cult of ‘Bazball’ was devalued by a dismal winter in limited-overs cricket, England’s managing director admitted: “We haven’t helped ourselves.” Jos Buttler quit as white-ball skipper after England’s humiliating exit from another global competition following their limp defence of the 50-over World Cup in India 17 months ago and a 100 per cent record - played three, lost three - at the Champions Trophy. And as Key laid the blame squarely at the door of his batsmen, he sprang a surprise by confiding that Stokes was under consideration to extend his double act with coach Brendon McCullum beyond the Test arena. Stokes, 33, has not played any form of white-ball cricket for England since the 2023 World Cup, while Bazball accomplice McCullum expanded his remit to include limited-overs thrashes in January. Key revealed: "Nothing is off the table. You look at every single option and think, 'What is the best thing to do?’ Ben Stokes is one of the best captains I've ever seen. It would be stupid not to look at him. “He is an unbelievably good tactician, which we’ve seen in Test cricket, but he’s also a leader of men. He is someone who gets the best out of people. When the pressure is really on, he is able to sort of throw a blanket around the players and say, ‘No, this is the way forward. Keep going with it.’ “What would that mean for his workload? There’s always a way in England where you start thinking, ‘What if it goes wrong?’ You’ve also got to think: ‘What if it goes right?’ And they are the decisions that I have to make.” Stokes has been stepping up his recovery from hamstring surgery at an England Lions training camp in Abu Dhabi. Key expects him to be fully fit to start the season ahead of this summer’s marquee series with India and next winter’s career-defining Ashes tour. Harry Brook (just 152 runs in his last nine innings) remains favourite to succeed Buttler, who stepped down after 10 defeats in 11 games since the turn of the year, but Key warned: “We are not going to rush this decision. Ultimately I felt it was right (for Buttler to resign), but I do feel for him. Sometimes you get a good hand in life, whether that’s captaincy or whatever, and sometimes you get a poor hand. “Jos, in terms of the way he captained the side, was actually as good as he had done since winning the World T20 in Australia (in late 2022). But the truth is, we haven’t been particularly good in white-ball cricket since the last era, when Eoin Morgan did it. “We were very poor in the Champions Trophy, we were very poor against India as well, even though that was a tough assignment. But when you’re not in form with the bat, and batting is your real strength, that’s a real problem. Over the last couple of years, the batting in particular has fallen off a cliff.” Only Ben Duckett and Joe Root, who scored England’s only hundreds at the tournament, looked in prime touch in Pakistan, but many of their problems were rooted in ‘funky’ Bazball ideas which simply did not work. Three wicketkeepers in the top six - Phil Salt, Jamie Smith and Buttler - was a luxury they could ill-afford. And the hunch of promoting Smith, who has made a fine start to his Test career, to No.3 and taking the gloves without any warm-up rehearsals, was not just thinking outside the box: It was beyond all comprehension. Key admitted: “As we said from the start, when the whole Bazball thing came out, it’s very simple: You’ve got to be able to put good bowlers under pressure and you’ve got to be able to soak it up. It’s not true that the only thing Brendon says is ‘Go harder, go harder’ - you’ve got to trust players to make those decisions at the right time. “There’s a world where people think the players don’t care, that they don’t care about winning, that they’re arrogant. That’s absolutely not true. Sometimes they are reckless, sometimes they make the wrong decision at the wrong time, but it’s not a case of them going out there and playing only one way.”