Cook is captain fantastic 2015
Alastair Cook has been named as captain of the iCC’s test team of the year following England’s ashes-winning summer — with Joe root and stuart Broad also chosen in the prestigious Xi.
Cook became only the third England captain, after WG Grace and Mike Brearley, to win more than one home ashes series when australia were defeated 3-2 in august, though it is his form with the bat that has earned him his place as an opener in the iCC team.
it is quite an accolade for a man who a year ago was sacked as England’s oneday captain and who, before the summer, faced calls to quit as test skipper too.
the selection period for the iCC side ran from september 18, 2014 to september 13, 2015, during which time Cook hit form after a two-year drought with 907 runs at 50. Had it taken in England’s tour of the UaE — where Cook made 263 in abu Dhabi and averaged 90 — those figures would have been even better. in 2015 he is the leading runscorer in tests, with 1,357. root scored 1,001 runs at 62 during the qualification period, including ashes hundreds at Cardiff and trent Bridge, while Broad, who makes the iCC team for the fifth time, took 44 wickets at 24 apiece.
the news comes the day after the absence of a single cricketer in the BBC’s list of 12 candidates for their sports Personality of the Year awards, in which cycling, swimming and gymnastics were all represented ahead of the nation’s summer sport.
The closest any England player gets to the iCC’s one-day team is root, who was 12th man. Meanwhile, surrey chairman richard thompson has joined senior officials at test-match venues to have expressed support for day-night, pink-ball cricket in England. Following the success of the first day-night test in adelaide last week, administrators from Durham, Hampshire, lancashire and Warwickshire — as well as MCC, who host lord’s tests — said they agreed with ECB chairman Colin Graves, who told Sportsmail he was ‘open-minded’ about the possibility of a pink-ball test here.
and thompson, a member of the ECB management board, said the idea could be used in four-day county cricket too. ‘i’m really up for it,’ he said. ‘We won’t know if it works until we start trialling it.’