Alastair Cook

Alastair Cook’s footwork and TV analysis

TV analysis can get a bit nit-picking and it turns us all into experts. Alastair Cook was in poor form and there had to be a reason: “His footwork’s not good. Here’s an example of that.” There’s your proof. Case closed.

Only it doesn’t exactly work like that. Technique can improve your chances of succeeding as a batsman, but flaws don’t always mean failure. A batsman can play a shot, a whole innings, or a whole career with dreadful footwork and still be pretty successful.

In Alastair Cook’s case, there was a lot of video footage of him playing duff shots. However, because he was getting out so quickly, all the footage was of the first few balls of each innings. That partly supports the view that poor technique is getting him out, but it’s also true that many of the very best batsman can bat like great fat lumps of dog toss when they first come to the crease.

Technique’s something you can’t think about when you’re batting. Thoughts are a thick gum that clogs your movements and sabotages your timing. What you’re really after is a Zen-like autopilot state.

If you were in a conversation with someone and they used the word ‘verticals‘, you wouldn’t think about hitting them in the face, would you? You’d just do it. That’s the state of mind a batsman needs.

Alastair Cook: future England captain

We appreciate England’s desire to identify the next England captain in advance, but why has Alastair Cook been chosen?

Warning: this article may contain some petty, bigoted views about certain strands of British society

Leadership attributes

There is no standout candidate to be the next England captain, yet England have clearly plumped for Alastair Cook. Why? Presumably he is ‘made of the right stuff’ and has a sound, tactical understanding of the game. Let’s take those in reverse order.

Tactical ability

We can’t say what goes on behind the scenes. All we can comment on is what we see. Alastair Cook presided over one Twenty20 match. It was the worst captained England side we can ever recall seeing.

Being made of ‘the right stuff’

What constitutes ‘the right stuff’? Being as his tactics are nads and his nervous manner is unlikely to inspire people, we’ll have to look elsewhere. We have concluded that ‘the right stuff’ is his social background.

To most of us, a school is a place. It is somewhere they make you go for a few years with bike sheds made of asbestos. To others, a school isn’t a place, it’s an attribute.

Why is Alastair Cook the best man to captain England?

Of course there must be more to this. In answer to the question ‘Why is Alastair Cook the best man to captain England?’ the answer is surely something more concrete than: ‘Oh, you know… it just seems like it should be him…’

Alastair Cook – treat us to an innings of rare beauty

It’s hard to pay attention on days like yesterday. You drift off, but every time you look up, you think: ‘Jesus, how did that happen?’

Look on the bright side though. It’s only very occasionally that a match situation calls for one of cricket’s finest sights: the innings of no intent.

The situation

Every once in a while, a number of factors coincide to create a situation so deliciously appealing it’s hard to avoid bursting a kidney with excitement. You need both sides’ first innings out of the way quite quickly, but you then need batting to get easier. You need the side batting last to be miles behind and you need plenty of time.

It was in South Africa that Mike Atherton played his classic 643-minute 185 not out, during which four South Africans in the crowd were hospitalised with acute despair. This is the template.

In this Test, South Africa are already 330 ahead and with two days to go, the stage is almost set. But who will step forward? Who in the England batting line-up could play an innings of no intent?

Step forward Alastair Cook

Andrew Strauss can be pretty dour. Jonathan Trott can eschew attacking shots for lengthy periods of time, but no-one matches Alastair Cook for his disinclination to lay bat on ball.

During his hundred in the last Test, Cook flatly refused to score on the off-side. He’s halfway there. All he needs to do now is spend nine or ten hours avoiding leg-side scoring shots as well.

This could be beautiful. We can see him unfurling leave after leave and treating us to the occasional insipid prod when he absolutely has to.

Come on, Alastair. Do it for Boycott. Do it for Tavaré.

Do South African born cricketers like Jonathan Trott represent you and your country?

England currently have a number of South African born players. Jonathan Trott’s the latest and he seems to be under some suspicion at the minute, despite spending seven years qualifying to play for England.

Mike Norrish, writing on the Telegraph’s site, says:

“I guess the whole thing boils down to representation and whether or not we want England’s cricketers to represent ‘us’.”

Does Jonathan Trott represent you? Does he represent your country?

Over the years, we’ve met a number of people who were born in South Africa who are working and making new lives for themselves in the UK. Conversely, we’ve met very few people like Alastair Cook, for example.

Jonathan Trott represents our version of England pretty well.

Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook

Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook have batted together for Essex for ten years or so. They make an odd, but effective, couple.

Cook’s a gangling left-handed posho who’s lumpen at the crease and nervy in front of the camera. Bopara’s a podgy, right-handed bloke, who’s often aggressive at the crease and calm in front of the camera – quite possibly because he’s pretty much oblivious to what’s going on.

Both scored hundreds. Both are therefore ace.

If we had to choose between them, we’d go for Ravi and not just because he’s scored three hundreds in three Test innings, although that’s pretty persuasive.

We like the way he smiles and stares into space when he’s asked a question he can’t answer, totally unarsed by what should be an uncomfortable situation. He does the same thing at the crease when he edges a ball. In both situations, he just waits to see what happens next. It’s like he doesn’t even remember the previous minute.

We find it encouraging and even inspiring that ‘being unaware of what’s going on around you’ can be a strength.

Alastair Cook, please stop hooking

Someone should look into irregular betting patterns surrounding ‘Alastair Cook caught hooking’ because he seems to be hell-bent on getting out this way.

In the last Test, he leant back and poked one into the air in an enticingly gentle parabola. In yesterday’s innings, he popped one up towards Sulieman Benn, who utterly spazzed the catch. Undeterred, he promptly had another go an over or so later with greater success.

We’d advise that he just lets the short balls hit him square in the face if this is the best he can do with them using his bat.

Which England batsman should get dropped

Alastair Cook

Why
Because he looks like the kind of person who eats sandwiches with a knife and fork.

Why not
Because Rob Key’s on the wrong continent.

Ian Bell

Why
Because if international cricket were a cartoon where everyone were an animal, Ian Bell would be the excitable squirrel who doesn’t really accomplish anything.

Why not
Yes, why not. That was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it?

Paul Collingwood

Why
Opposition bowlers seem to have caught on that he isn’t a member of the groundstaff shovelling soil around; he’s actually got a bat in his hand, not a spade.

Why not
Actually knows the value of his Test place and is pleasingly prone to fighting to retain it.

England 51 all out

It was put to Alastair Cook that after Adelaide in 2006 and 81 all out in Galle in 2007, England’s batting was having the odd disaster.

“If it happens again, then things have to change. But those are three isolated incidents over three years, so it is not as though it is happening every week.”

If England bat okay in the first innings of the next Test but are then skittled again in the second, is that an isolated incident? Is it isolated by a single instance of competence?

Is ‘every week’ the frequency with which things have to go wrong in order for there to be a problem?

Alastair Cook in one-day cricket

Alastair Cook hit a hundred in England’s latest warm-up. The bowlers he had to face might not have been the world’s finest, but he hit 138 not out off 140 balls and every time he does that he’ll be getting a little bit more comfortable with one-day cricket.

There are people who say that Alastair Cook’s too stodgy a batsman for one-day cricket, but we disagree. Cook plays some stodgy Test cricket because it works for him. He’s not going to adopt the same approach for one-dayers. He’s not an idiot.

All international batsman can hit a cricket ball. It’s pretty much a minimum requirement. The difference between one batsman and the next is largely down to what they decide to do with each delivery. They’re trying to score runs and they’re trying not to get out. Alastair Cook makes these decisions well.

It’s risk assessment and Alastair Cook’s a good judge. He’ll make different decisions in one-day cricket because the needs of the team are different, but we’re confident he’ll make the right decisions.

Like us, for example. We consistently make the wrong decisions. They might be in completely different areas of our life, but it’s our decision-making that’s the problem, not the context.

We wish this mug contained tea not coffee; we wished we’d worn clothing that better matched our surroundings last time we visited Rob Key; and we wish we’d never opted for a cheese omelette that time in Karnataka.

We really, really wish that last one. If anyone’s ever had a longer 10 hour train ride than the one that followed that omelette, we’d sooner not hear about it. Two words: white froth.

Alastair Cook papers over some cracks

The quiet, southern, well-kempt, left-handed Michael Atherton for the 21st Century (actually, maybe he’s not Michael Atherton, thinking about it) brought the merest hint of pride back to shameful, shameful England with what we can’t help but describe as a rearguard hundred.

Alastair’s very much a rearguard hundred kind of a guy. How very English. Hopefully he won’t be called upon to score too many over the next decade or so, although judging from this Test, it’s a good job he’s getting the practice in.

Anyway, well done. Not the very best way to end the cricketing year, but better than last year at least.

Sri Lanka v England, third Test, fifth day at Galle
Sri Lanka 499-8 declared (Mahela Jayawardene 213 not out, Chaminda Vaas 90, Tillekeratne Dilshan 84, Steve Harmison 3-104)
England 81 (Chaminda Vaas 4-28)
England 251-6 (Alastair Cook 118, Muttiah Muralitharan 3-91)
Match drawn