THE ASHES COOK’S ON THE ROPES
England opener fails yet again to spark fears over his future
ALASTAIR COOK trooped off, alone with his thoughts, after another failure that will only strengthen the feeling that he is battling not only Australia but also the dying of the light.
The demise of Cook after taking his tally to just 83 runs in six innings here was indicative of an Ashes series in which England’s big guns have failed to fire while the supporting cast have done most of what could have been expected.
If England, without their best player in Ben Stokes, had any chance in this series they simply had to expect major contributions from Cook, Joe Root, Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson.
Yet, at the end of a fourth day of the third Test that saw England desperately trying to cling on to the Ashes, three of the four in Cook, Root and Broad had yet to make anything like the impact needed. Only Anderson has done himself anything like justice.
And there’s no doubt James Vince could count himself unlucky in England’s second innings when he was bowled by an unplayable 90mph delivery which was heading down the leg side before hitting a crack in the pitch and uprooting the off-stump.
Cook is at the forefront of the batting problems. Take out his extraordinary tally of 766 runs seven years ago in a winning series, which is looking more and more like the exception to the rule in Australia, and his Ashes record is modest. England’s record runscorer’s 100th Test coincided with the concession of the urn in Perth four years ago and now his 150th is going exactly the same way unless an unlikely rearguard or heavy rain saves them on the final day. It summed up Cook’s fortunes that he fell to an outstanding return catch by Josh Hazlewood just when England so badly needed him to make serious inroads into the first- innings deficit of 259 that all but sealed their Ashes fate. This is undoubtedly Cook’s worst spell, without even a half-century in his last 10 innings, since he was facing the axe in the summer of 2010 until a century at The Oval against Pakistan sealed his ticket to Australia. It would be foolish to write off a man who has so often confounded the doubters but Cook, 33 on Christmas Day but with a lot of miles on the clock, is not the sort to outstay his welcome if this run extends to Melbourne and Sydney. Cook’s issues would not be anything like as serious if his successor as captain had been able to come anywhere near the Herculean efforts of an Australia leader in Steve Smith who was finally dismissed yesterday for a careerbest 239. But Root showed all the symptoms of a scrambled brain when he aimed an expansive drive at Nathan Lyon’s first ball and succeeded only in edging to the omnipresent Smith at slip via the gloves of wicketkeeper Tim Paine.
This was why there were still those of us last winter who hoped Cook could fulfil his last captaincy wish of leading England in this series, because it would have stopped Root being exposed to the horrors of Australia this early.
A 4-0 defeat by India put paid to that and it can only be hoped that something similar, or perhaps worse, here will not damage a captain and batsman integral to this England team’s hopes of fulfilling their potential.
When Root was out, England were in big trouble again on 60 for three after Smith had finally put them out of their misery by declaring on 662 for nine, with Australia out of sight of an England team who could easily have lost in four days.
That they did not was down to a combination of an all-too-brief but classy cameo from Vince and the arrival of the rain that represents England’s best hope of survival.
It is no exaggeration to say Vince was playing for his Test career here despite his encouraging start to this series in Brisbane, because he has flattered to deceive far too often while not impressing England off the field.
Now he showed why Trevor Bayliss wanted to give him another chance with 12 boundaries of the highest class until he received a ball that might well have dismissed any batsman in Test history.
The biggest difference between the teams here other than Smith’s two match- winning ‘ daddy’ hundreds has been Australia’s extreme pace and now Mitchell Starc produced one of the deliveries of this century.
It is not clear what more Vince could have done to tackle what was in effect a 90mph leg-break that crashed into his off-stump as he shaped to play it to leg, other than rue the crack the ball hit to dramatically alter its path. At least Vince did enough to earn another chance in Melbourne and, with Mark Stoneman falling early to Hazlewood, England were 132 for four when the rain finally brought a premature end to the day.
England did make a good start yesterday when, after taking just one wicket in the whole of Saturday, they added three more in the first half hour of the fourth day to at least claim back a semblance of pride. Anderson trapped Mitch Marsh lbw with only the second ball of the day — ending a monumental stand of 301 with Smith — on his way to four wickets that took his series tally to a respectable 12 and his year’s tally to an excellent 51.
In their 100th Test together, there was no such satisfaction for his strike partner Broad, revealed to be carrying an injury to his left knee, as he returned his worst ever Test innings figures of nought for 142. Broad, enduring one of his worst series, does not quite have the need to perform that Cook does in the last two Tests, but Nathan Lyon’s pre-series pledge to end English careers is beginning to have a worryingly prescient feel.