England hero Alastair Cook delighted with double hundred

Alastair Cook admitted he feared his England place was in danger until his unbeaten 244 in the fourth Ashes Test at the MCG. It was Cook’s first innings of substance since last summer, and despite coming, as he put it “three or four weeks too late”, the country’s all-time leading Test run-scorer took immense satisfaction in what he described as “one of the more emotional” innings of his international career.

Cook has never been dropped by England in Test cricket, and has played 149 consecutive Test matches since 2006, the year of his debut. But amid his poor recent run of form, he said: “They would have been entitled to. Just because I literally hadn’t scored a run since Edgbaston. Two West Indies games, three here and some warm-up games.

“I always feel I’ve got the backing of the selectors, but you’ve still got to deliver the goods. And I hadn’t done that. It was frustrating.”

For all the runs he has scored, the records he has broken, did he ever doubt himself? “Yeah, 100 per cent. I’ve doubted myself for 12 years. I’ll probably continue to doubt myself. The longer it goes, the harder it becomes. That’s why I’m quite proud of going to the well again and deliver- ing a performance like that.

“It’s a shame that it’s three or four weeks too late. I’ll have to live with that for a long time.”

Although Cook has made a career out of heavy scoring, it was in many ways the atypical Cook innings - full of goodlooking shots, drives down the ground and attacking intent. “You have a bit less to lose when your highest score [in the series] is 30-odd,” he said. “I suppose I had nothing to lose, in one sense. I thought I’d play a bit more positively. “With my batting, there’s quite a few moving parts to it. When they’re not quite in sync, it can be quite frustrating. One way of delivering it is time in the middle. I got to 40 and it felt like the old movements were back. If I could put my finger on exactly what it was, it would probably save me a lot of strife. “A few times in your career, you get into that bit of rhythm where time just flies back. This tour, batting for half an hour has felt like two hours. For some reason, the last 10 hours has gone quickly. It’s a strange sport, and probably why it drives you mad.”

Australian coach Darren Lehmann, meanwhile, conceded that Australia’s hopes of victory and thus a 5-0 series whitewash were effectively over. Asked whether his side would look to push for victory, he retorted: “We’re 160 runs behind, mate. We’d have to get 450 in a day. How do you want us to do that? Slog?

“We’ve got to worry about getting past them first. That’s the first challenge. England scored reasonably quickly, but you would think we’re not going to score as quickly as that, so we’re just going to be passing them by stumps tomorrow night. So what do you want us to set them?”

Lehmann also complained about the lack of life in the pitch. “You’d like a bit more bounce and pace,” he griped. “Obviously it’s a big weapon of ours. But you’ve got to chop and change. Look, it is what it is, and we just get on with it.

And you suspect that if he took a step back, even Moeen would probably say: ‘yeah, fair enough.’ The performances - an average of 19 with the bat and 135 with the ball - have simply not been there for him on this trip, not since a decent couple of knocks with the bat in Brisbane and the wickets of Usman Khawaja and Josh Hazlewood in Australia’s first innings.

Since then, to be blunt, it has been painful to watch. His frantic, hide-behind-the-sofa 14-ball 20 on Thursday was perhaps the nadir: the innings of a player who has mislaid not simply his form, but his basic cricketing identity.

Just a few weeks after ending what was statistically the greatest summer of his Test career, Moeen is on the verge of losing his England place. And the thesis here is that the blame lies just as much with England as it does with Moeen.

The first thing to say is that Australia is no place for a visiting off-spinner. Even the best of them have struggled here: Graeme Swannaveraged 53. Ravi Ashwin 55, Harbhajan Singh(who tormented Australia in home conditions) 73, Muttiah Muralitharan 75, Saeed Ajmal 111. With the best will in the world, Moeen is not really in their class. What did we really think was going to happen?

Added to which, his preparations were hampered by a side strain. A gashed finger in Brisbane affected his ability to impart spin. Before he had even delivered a ball, Moeen was going into this series with history, conditions and injury conspiring against him. But that wasn’t the half of it.

There were chuckles throughout the room when Moeen walked in after taking a hat-trick at The Oval last summer and quipped that he still considered himself a second spinner. In truth, it was not so wide of the mark. The selection of Liam Dawson for the Lord’s Test against South Africa was an indication of how England were beginning to see Moeen evolving as a bowler: away from long dry spells and into a more niche, attacking role. THE INDEPENDENT