ONLY A FOOL WOULD WRITE HIM OFF

As Alastair Cook prepares for his 150th cap, our man Nasser says...

The greatest compliment I can pay Alastair Cook on the eve of his 150th Test cap is that if I wanted an england player to bat for my life it would be him.

If you were considering batsmen who were pleasing on the eye when talking about england’s greatest of the modern era you would arguably come up with Graham Gooch or Kevin Pietersen. Sure, they would put bums on seats but if you really needed someone to come through for you it would be Cook.

Few who have pulled on an england shirt have possessed his mental resilience and it is a mark of his qualities that it will not be until he has gone that people will truly realise what an achievement his career has been.

I cannot tell you how difficult it is to go through 150 Test matches at the top of the order facing that new ball day in, day out. And that’s the point, really. Only one man can.

his battle began nearly 12 years ago and he is still fighting hard. Usually, over the course of so many Tests things will get easier for you, but for Alastair the latter half of his career has actually got tougher if anything because people have worked him out. he doesn’t have the best technique in the world, stands at over six feet tall and, as tends to be the case with left-handed batsmen once his balance goes, his head falls towards the off side and leaves him vulnerable to the lbw.

We have seen evidence of that on this current Ashes tour, and bowlers now look to keep the ball full and straight to nullify his back-foot game.

err in line and length, though, and there is no one better at tucking it off their hips or cutting through the off side.

There have been times when it has looked as if he is struggling to maintain success.

Yet he has undoubtedly been at his best — both as a captain and a player — when people have started writing him off, and his stubborn side has kicked in.

heading into the 2010-11 Ashes everyone was questioning whether he could score runs in Australia because he hadn’t had a great time on the previous tour. To score 766 of them in that series was arguably his greatest achievement as a batsman. And I don’t think I have seen a more emotionally drained man than Cook when in 2015 he stood on that stage at Trent Bridge and held the Ashes urn aloft.

Tears in his eyes, it was clearly a very emotional moment for him because after the 5-0 in Australia everyone was demanding he quit the captaincy.

Yet that would have been the easy option. Instead of just concentrating on his batting at that time in his career he dug deep and that’s what I love most about the bloke. he always takes the difficult path and says: ‘I’m going to prove you all wrong.’

The fact that he has never been dropped, and the only Test match he has missed since making his debut was due to illness on his first tour of India, is incredible.

Undoubtedly, it is because of this inherent ability whenever he has been out of nick to score difficult runs. Throughout that career there have been times when he’s been at that lastchance saloon — think of Pakistan at The Oval in 2010 when he got dropped and turned his innings into a hundred.

So many times when under scrutiny, unable to buy a run, he has found a way to get a score to keep himself in the side. In this regard he is a very old-fashioned cricketer.

BOTh physically and mentally he has always been able to survive. Think how easy over a dozen years it would have been to have missed a match as an opening batsman and slip fielder due to a cracked finger.

Now, with just 62 runs in four innings in the Ashes, following 61 in his final four innings last summer, and the Australian attack bowling well to him, he is entering another period in which he needs one of his emphatic responses.

history is an indication of what will happen in the future. Look at every other time he has come up against a predicament like this — what has he done?

he has gone to the well and found a way to come back. A way to keep his Test average at 45.84, a high-class mark for an opening batsman.

This has partly been down to his own individuality, and the refuge his farm provides. Being able to get away from it all and put some kind of balance in his life has been invaluable. The offfield focus has enabled him to survive and thrive. If you are driven by the game and thinking about cricket 24/7 it takes so much out of your tank.

As a Test specialist, he gets away for chunks of time and switches off. When he switches back on he is refreshed.

Of course, when you have a young family, as he does, your priorities in life change and there will be that lingering question of: ‘Do I need this any more?’

he has already been through this process with the captaincy and eventually, whether that be at 150-odd Test matches or 200, he will have to make that decision with his batting.

Only he will know when those feelings take over, but one thing the last ten to 12 years have taught me is that whether it be his captaincy or his batting, you are a fool to write off Alastair Cook. You do so at your peril.