NB: this article was written before the official announcement of the Alastair Cook being dropped as England captain.
Alastair Cook’s position as England’s ODI captain and opening batsman has come under more scrutiny from fans and the media after he endured an embarrassing tour of Sri Lanka, but he is not likely to be ditched before next year’s World Cup, according to ECB managing director, Paul Downton.
Cook scored 119 runs in six innings at an average of 19.83, and a strike-rate of 67.23. The numbers tell just a fragment of the story: the England captain looked nervous against seam and hopeless against spin, and for every ball he dealt with calmly, there were five that flummoxed him.
Even in his brief stints at the crease, he has survived marginal lbw calls and dropped catches at slip, so that the dismal returns that will go down in the record-books actually flatter him a little. In the seventh and final ODI, he had edged two balls into the slips and survived an lbw call before Jayawardene finally held onto one. Cook cannot pretend to have batted better than his 19.83 in this series.
When the England captain walked back to the pavilion, his “32 (49) strike-rate: 65.3” flashing up on the scoreboard, his side needed to make over 6.8 runs per over, for 37 overs, with just seven wickets in hand. Cook would never have been the player to smash a brilliant, match-winning hundred on his own, but his role in the team is to be a stabilising force, an ever-fixèd mark around which the likes of Jos Buttler and Eoin Morgan can play their own way.
There is a tendency to under-value the importance of a solid batsman in ODI cricket. This is partly due to the commercial value of players who are seen as power-hitters: there’s a reason why Pepsi adverts feature a Shahid Afridi straight-up-in-the-air slog and not a Misbah-ul-Haq block. In cricketing terms, however, Misbah’s shot is less damaging to the team, albeit less exciting to watch.
When you are in the team as an anchor, though, drifting aimlessly about the place as Cook has been doing is not an option. We know he won’t rack up 250 in an ODI, and even 150 is a stretch at his rate of scoring; but if he doesn’t even look like he can make 50, he’s not close to justifying his place in the team.
Paul Downton has described Cook as a natural leader. And yet, under Cook, England have consistently failed to bowl their 50 overs in the allotted time. He was suspended for one ODI for repeatedly breaking the rules over slow over-rates. Of course the bowlers must take their share of the responsibility, but if Cook truly were a natural leader, would he not have stamped his authority on their sluggish ways by now? A natural leader might be quicker to set fields and pick bowlers, too.
England have not won a bilateral ODI series under Cook in 2014. Nobody doubts for a moment that England have an abundance of exceptionally talented young players (and several more experienced cricketers) at their disposal, but their performances have in no way lived up to their potential. Natural leaders enable their teams to function as more than the sum of their parts; under Cook, England are considerably underperforming given the strength of their squad.
Paul Downton also claimed that England’s playing of spin against Sri Lanka had been (his word, not mine), “revelationary”. Cook averaged 20 against spin in the seven ODIs, and at the time Downton was making that claim, he averaged just 13.
Cook clearly can’t have been high up in Downton’s mind at that point, and he wasn’t. Downton wanted to claim that the real story of the summer was the emergence of young players like Joe Root and Jos Buttler in international cricket. He said that Peter Moores and Cook had created a team environment which facilitated the success of England’s new stars.
Putting aside the fact that Buttler didn’t have a great tour of Sri Lanka, Downton’s comments are dangerously myopic. He has no proof that these players would have performed any worse under a different captain. And for every player who has succeeded in the new era, there is one who has failed to fulfil their potential (Ben Stokes and Alex Hales are good examples).
It is also wrong to assert that individual successes can be credited to the team environment. If England are creating a team environment in which Joe Root does well but England lose, they are failing to do their job and deserve no credit.
It is worth asking what sort of a team environment Alastair Cook and Peter Moores are creating in ODI cricket. When Ian Bell was dropped from the side after the second ODI of this series, he was without an ODI century in 26 innings. During those 26 innings, he had made seven half-centuries, including two scores above 80. In 2014, he averaged 34.21 in ODIs at a strike-rate of 90.89.
At the same point, Alastair Cook was a staggering 41 innings away from his last ODI hundred (since extended to 45), with only eight half-centuries and no scores above 80. In 2014, he averaged 29.06 in ODIs at a strike-rate of 71.35.
According to all logic, Cook should have been the man to make way, and not Bell. England are creating a “team environment” in which a player who would be nowhere near the team on merit, is kept in the XI only because he is captain, a job at which he is also failing.
Brilliant individuals like Joe Root and James Taylor can succeed in spite of difficult conditions; it is churlish for anyone but them to take credit for their success. The job of Peter Moores and the ECB is to create an environment in which the team as a whole can compete at the World Cup.
That starts by making England’s ODI team a meritocracy.
That starts by sacking Alastair Cook.
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