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....
The 30th anniversary of England’s all-conquering Ashes tour and the side’s rapid descent into disarray is a reminder of how fast fortunes can change in cricketFor all the sixes and the promises of a brave new dynamic world, England’s Asian expedition has not suggested much progress; nor has it produced many wins. Before Christmas there was victory in the ODIs against Bangladesh followed by a drawn Test series, which produced the most captivating contests of the winter.In India, after an encouraging first Test in Rajkot there were four defeats of increasing inevitability. Then in January England lost the ODI series even though their lowest score in three games was 321 for eight in Kolkota, where they won; this must be...
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...
The 24-year-old who was parachuted into India to open the batting has been getting the Sandhurst treatment with England Lions and would snap your hand off to play 100 Tests at No10Be it next month or next year, Joe Root’s expected appointment as successor to Alastair Cook as England’s Test captain will represent something of a step into the unknown, given the Yorkshireman’s relative lack of experience in the role at domestic level.Though with this scenario now seemingly the norm, the national set-up, chiefly through their former head coach turned Lions director, Andy Flower, are looking to enhance leadership qualities in other ways, including lessons from the decorated former army captain, Gemma Morgan, over the past two years. Related: No...
Trevor Bayliss wants his bowling unit to improve but their performance at Eden Gardens is something to build on ahead of June’s tournamentThe day before the third and final one-day international Jason Roy told a mixed media gathering at Eden Gardens that England would be “taking the positives” from their two defeats to date, the bare-knuckle bowler-pummelings in Pune and Cuttack. Shortly afterwards, in a flagrant breach of international sports-speak code, Roy was asked by a curious Indian journalist to describe these “positives” he had identified. What were the positives exactly? And could he rank them in any specific order?Roy looked a bit stumped, as well he might given this is perhaps the first time in modern sporting history any...