The End is Nigh: The Alastair Cook Problem

Fear not. The apocalypse isn’t here quite yet. Dark clouds are gathering over the England cricket team but I can’t see any horsemen. What I do see, however, is the ECB flogging a dead horse. Could this be the beginning of the end for Alastair Cook?

The ECB won’t sack Cook. It’s politically impossible for them to do so. Unlike other players like Carberry, Hales or even Sam Robson (who scored a similar amount of runs as his skipper last summer), Cook will be given every possible chance to silence his critics. The line between ‘loyalty’ and ‘favouritism’ is a fine one.

At some point, however, it will become impossible for the ECB to retain their favourite son. Unless Cook the batsman alters his technique substantially, I can’t see him scoring the runs needed to justify his place in the ODI side.

Cook doesn’t look like a particularly good batsman at the moment. Last summer Nasser Hussain argued he’d been ‘found out’: pitch the ball up on a consistent basis, deny him the luxury of playing back or playing off his legs (his great strengths), and you’re left with a tentative, flawed batsman.

Driving doesn’t come naturally to Cook. Neither does bending his front leg, transferring his weight forward, or defending with his bat close to the body. Instead he’s thrusting at the ball with rigid hands way in front of his leading leg. It’s ungainly and awkward.

With his 30^th birthday fast approaching (he’ll reach the landmark on Christmas day) maybe it’s too late for Cook to change? He had two months to make adjustments before this tour began, but looks like exactly the same player to me. Maybe the well has finally run dry?

Unless Cook scores some runs soon – which is possible but looking increasingly unlikely – he might have to stand down as ODI captain before the World Cup. This would be humiliating for both Cook and the ECB. And don’t think his ODI place and his captaincy of the test side are totally unrelated.

Even if Cook survives until the end of the World Cup, his test captaincy will be damaged whenever he hands over the reins. It happened to Vaughan; and it happened to Strauss. Once the public, and the other England players, see a fresh and exciting alternative, Cook will soon look like yesterday’s man.

Because words don’t come easily to Alastair – his interviews are uncomfortable, and we know that Matt Prior used to speak for him in the dressing room – his authority will soon ebb away. Cook’s actions have to speak louder than words. Oratory and strategy are not his forte.

The warning signs are already there. When Ravi Bopara and James Tredwell were wheeled in front of the media this week, it was like the dreaded vote of confidence. Their words were meant to bolster Cook but they only raised more questions than answers:

Bopara and Tredwell talked about supporting Alastair and creating an environment in which the skipper could thrive. But surely this is the wrong way round? It’s the captain’s job, as the most senior player, to lead and support the other players – not to be supported or mollycoddled himself.

The players aren’t idiots. They know this. They surely want the best for their friend, but they also need their captain to lead. International sport is a tough place. There can be no passengers: particularly passengers keeping hungry young players out of the side. It’s hard to respect someone you have to keep propping up.

Many observers think Cook should resign the ODI captaincy and concentrate on the test team. They’ve got a point. But it’s not as easy as that.

For starters they’re assuming that Cook the limited overs batsman exists in a bubble, and that his struggles in fifty over cricket are irrelevant to his test form. I’m not so sure.

A captain who has been exposed so brutally in one form of the game (and been hounded out of the team) will inevitably lose some respect. If Cook is forced to resign the ODI captaincy, he’ll be like a Prime Minister losing a crucial vote in The Commons. His authority in general will be diminished. How long before the rank and file start eyeing up the test captaincy for themselves?

Furthermore, let’s not forget that Cook hasn’t scored a test century for almost two years either. His supporters might claim his knock at Southampton proved the doubters wrong, but those without rose tinted spectacles saw that innings for what it was: a hard slog, against an average attack, by a batsman who simply doesn’t look comfortable in his own skin.

We mustn’t forget that cricket, like most professional sports, is a game that requires confidence and self-belief. Every time the skipper makes a low score, makes it too slowly, and the world calls for him to stand down, his self-belief is eroded. He wouldn’t be human otherwise.

Consequently I’m not convinced that stepping away from fifty over cricket will save Cook’s career. The likes of Ricky Ponting retired from ODI’s on their own terms. Cook will be damaged goods with a bruised ego, his authority challenged and his reputation somewhat tarnished.

Perhaps this is why Cook seems so reluctant to step down. He fully understands the implications of failure, yet he’s lacking the batting form and confidence required to dig himself out of this hole.

Much of this is the ECB’s fault, of course. Cook has never been captaincy material. Yet because he looks the part, and is very much the sort of person the ECB wants the England captain to be (in terms of upbringing and congeniality) they’ve backed him to the hilt, and placed him in an impossibly difficult situation.

In the process, they’ve saddled a likable, inoffensive man with unrealistic expectations and a heavy burden he looks incapable of carrying. Cook was never the golden boy the ECB like to pretend he is. His poor Ashes record – the contest that matters – proves he is not. He’s an awkward leader saddled with political baggage.

The ECB has also managed to take a consistent (if somewhat unspectacular) opener, who is a good team man and well liked in the dressing room, and made his presence a divisive issue. It’s naïve to think only those on the outside debate Cook’s true worth.

There are players in the England squad who, rightly or wrongly, believe they deserve a place in the side. When they see a captain who ex-players and the majority of fans are questioning, who isn’t scoring runs, and hasn’t done so for an awful long time, it’s human nature to feel miffed.

In a team that’s supposed to be a meritocracy, players with big ambitions and a family to feed won’t tolerate perceived favouritism for long. Professional friction can soon turn into personal animosity. What happens to the sacred ‘environment’ then?

The bottom line is that Cook can’t slip away quietly from the ODI team. It’s too big an issue and the emotions have run too high. If someone like Bell had been dropped to focus on test cricket, the media attention would have been negligible, and he might have prolonged his test career for a year or two.

Cook doesn’t have this option. He’s wearing a target on his back. If he fails in the ODI arena, and his replacement succeeds, how long will his test captaincy – or indeed his test career – last for?

Ask yourself this: how many recent former England captains have slipped back seamlessly into the rank and file? Only Alec Stewart, the ultimate team man, managed to do so for any length of time without harbouring ill feeling or suffering poor form. Vaughan, Hussain and Strauss were all gone in the blink of an eye.

Unless Cook metamorphoses into an attacking one-day batsman – capable of scoring regular hundreds at a run-a-ball or better – things are going to come to head sooner rather than later.

Alastair, you’d better start scoring some runs, fast.

James Morgan