In his last press conference England’s outgoing captain says he gave it his best shot but admits fallout from Kevin Pietersen sacking took a heavy tollThis time there were no tears or tantrums, spats, scandals, angry words or apologies. Alastair Cook, already unique among England captains in that he has led in more Tests, and scored more runs, than any of the 78 other men who have done the job, achieved another rare feat. He orchestrated a graceful resignation, on his own terms, in his own time, and without controversy.At Lord’s on Tuesday Cook gave his final press conference in the post, in a small, stuffy room high up in the Tavern Stand, the groundstaff working away in the background...
Yorkshireman, who looks set to replace Alastair Cook, is the right leader for the gung ho generation and his county’s record of Test captains augurs wellThe most measured, drama-free departure from the England captaincy in decades will surely be followed by the most uncontentious announcement of Alastair Cook’s successor within the next two weeks. Joe Root is poised to become England’s 80th Test captain. The chances of him being given the job are even greater than that of Celtic winning the Scottish Premiership – and they are currently 27 points ahead of their nearest challengers, Aberdeen.There are arguments against Root but none of them is decisive. There is no necessity for the best player to have the job – but...
To Cook, captaincy was a corollary of his monumental batting. Having carried the burden through 59 tumultuous Tests, he steps down exhausted but unbrokenWhen Alastair Cook started at Bedford School, his father bought him a copy of Mike Brearley’s book The Art of Captaincy. A decade later, Cook admitted that he had never read actually got round to reading it. In the autobiography Cook published when he was 24 – he was as precocious in this regard as every other – he explained that as a kid all he cared about was batting, “and I did not want anything getting in the way of it”. If some men are born to the captaincy, and others achieve it, Cook assumed it....
It is possible to argue England could have won every short‑form game before that final thrashing had they not been undone by a series of improbable eventsTake the positives out of that then. Better to burn out than fade away and England’s cricketers certainly ended their white‑ball tour of India in a shared magnesium flare at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. The insistence on building towards the Champions Trophy in June has been so relentless it was tempting to ask Eoin Morgan afterwards what positives he would be taking, what lessons learnt, skill-sets executed from losing eight wickets for eight runs in 19 balls in Bengaluru – on the bare figures, England’s worst batting collapse in any kind of cricket.Except of course...
There is no rush to hand over the leader’s baton but an early decision would allow Joe Root to bed down in time for the Ashes series next winterFronting up to the media after a Test defeat is something Alastair Cook has now done more than any other England captain and after the final-day collapse in Chennai he turned to the room of assembled journalists that had just grilled him in the bowels of the stadium to wish them a merry Christmas and a safe flight home.If reporting this farewell sounds unctuous then consider the circumstances: the self-destructive tendency of his batsmen, on a pitch that just 24 hours had seen his bowlers ship a torturous 759 for seven, made...