A winning end would have been a fitting way to bow out
Peter Hayter was at Lord’s for Alastair Cook’s final press conference as England captain and gives his expert take on the resignation of the skipper
The venue for Alastair Cook’s farewell press conference at Lord’s this week said it all. For our “round-table” chat with the outgoing England captain, representatives of Her Majesty’s Press were invited to attend hospitality box N/O of the Tavern Stand.
And, by the time we left some half an hour later, he had made it abundantly clear that those letters stood not for “don’t do it, Cooky!” but “just say no”.
Just because a decision is right doesn’t mean you have to like it, however, and watching him from across the table (long and narrow, in the event), tracking eyes that looked tired, a little empty and unmistakably sad, you sensed just how much the man who has captained England more times than anyone else is going to miss ever doing so again.
Cook said he had known he was “done” from the moment he got on the plane home from India at the end of his side’s 4-0 defeat in December, but waited until a fortnight ago to tell director of England cricket Andrew Strauss because he wanted to make absolutely sure he was making the right call.
In the event, no sign to the contrary ever came, and no thought he thought, no conversation he had with friends, family, mentor, director of cricket, senior player or coach, no moment of wishful thinking or hunch, could persuade him from quitting.
“You can kid yourself a bit,” he said, “but, unfortunately, I wasn’t for kidding.”
No, he wasn’t. But looking out on the ground where, since making his home Test debut in 2006, he has batted more than anywhere else and, as England captain, he has enjoyed the full range, from beating Australia by 347 runs in 2013 to losing to them by 405 runs two years later, you sensed all he could see now were images not just of what had gone but what might have been to come and just how painful was the notion that he would not be leading his players through those moments.
His words, carefully chosen and confidently expressed, underpinned the feeling of loss and when, as he rose to go, he joked, “It’s not an obituary,” you were left wondering if, in his heart of hearts, he thought otherwise.
“The hard bit”, reflected the 32-yearold Essex man, “was giving it away and being honest with myself and going ‘yeah, it’s time to go’.
“There’s been some tough moments but walking out as England captain is very special. Leading this group of men, trying your best for your country and being at the forefront of it, is an incredible honour.” Relief? “Possibly, in a small sense. But I haven’t felt that relief. More, there is disappointment because I know I can’t give any more.”
Did Strauss try to convince you to stay?
“No, which I’m not sure is a good thing or a bad thing.”
And finally, the crux of the matter, in response to the question: Was there anything making you think you should carry on?
“Only it’s such an amazing job to do – you’re England captain, you’re very soon former captain. It’s never going to come round again… and the opportunity to lead the team, it stops.”
Cook might have given the job away before now, of course, and he reminded us that he’d “been to the well” a couple of times during his captaincy, most notably during the fallout from the Kevin Pietersen saga in 2014, when he suffered frenzied attacks on social media from Pietersen’s high-profile supporters which caused great distress to him and his family.
“I was part of the team that made that decision (to end Pietersen’s England career) and the decision was what we thought was best for English cricket.
“But there were certain times when it did feel as if I was the only one who made that decision.
“I did bear the brunt of it and my wife (Alice) saw a lot of it (abuse on social media) and without her and her family I would not have lasted as long as I did. That was certainly the toughest moment off the field.”
And although there were more than enough good times to compensate, one senses what upsets and frustrates this amiable, honourable but highly ambitious man more than anything else is that, despite all his successes, winning the Ashes twice, pulling off a brilliant win in India at the first time of asking and, lest we forget, an impressive victory in South Africa little more than a year ago, he has had to bow out on a low.
Mike Gatting is regarded as one of the heroes of modern England cricket for leading England to victory in Australia in 1986-87, but that wasn’t enough to allow him to end his captaincy a winner.
Nor did David Gower, Graham Gooch, Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart, Nasser Hussain, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen, nor his immediate predecessor, Strauss.
Cook hoped and, at times, genuinely believed he might be the one to buck the trend, maybe by bowing out after the next Ashes series down under after having inflicted revenge on Australia for the humiliating 5-0 disaster last time round.
Maybe it’s the hope that gets you in the end for how much must it have hurt Cook to accept that it was not going to happen on his watch?
In the end, Cook understood he simply did not have enough gas left in the tank and did exactly the right thing in exactly the right way, with the quiet dignity and humility that, whatever his tactical shortcomings as a captain, he has always displayed as a leader.
“It’s a job you need to give 100 per cent commitment to, to drive the team forward at all times. But looking in the mirror at the end of India, I felt I couldn’t do that.
“It might have been 95 per cent but that’s not good enough and it’s not a job you hang onto.
“The last year, we played some good cricket but we lost eight games. We have stagnated, if we are being brutally honest, as a team.”
Do you take responsibility for that stagnation?
“One hundred per cent. That’s part of the parcel of being captain.You ARE responsible, with the coaches, it’s not a one-man thing but ultimately the captain is part of that.
“There is a lot of work that needed to be done I felt and I just didn’t have that energy to do that.
“I don’t have regrets. I gave it my best shot. I have loved every minute of doing it. It has tested me and I am proud of what I have achieved.
“The dressing-room has been fantastic, the support of the players has been brilliant, but after leading the team for four-and-a-half years, it’s time to hear a new voice.”
Even so, whatever Cook and England achieve with Joe Root at the helm and no matter how enthusiastic the former captain says he is about playing under the new one for another four or five years, getting over the fact that voice is not his may prove one of his biggest challenges.
Cook understood he simply did not have enough gas left in the tank and did exactly the right thing in exactly the right way, with the quiet dignity and humility that he has always displayed as a leader