‘I have never been this inconsistent’
Alastair Cook has come through barren periods before and is working hard to do so once again
This summer it is the turn of Alastair Cook from England’s senior core to face questions about how long he wants to continue as a Test cricketer.
In 2017, it was James Anderson who started the season with speculation swirling around his future. He responded with his best-ever summer in England, taking 39 wickets, and remains the leader of the attack going into next month’s Test series against Pakistan. Can Cook do the same and preserve his place at the top of the England order?
He had a middling year in 2017. He averaged 47 but two mammoth scores, 243 against West Indies and 244 in Melbourne, put a gloss on 12 months of inconsistency. His lowest point was in Australia, when he admitted contemplating retirement until his comeback score in the Boxing Day Test.
In New Zealand he had hoped to build on that effort, but was badly out of form and looked short of time in the middle as he contributed 23 runs in four innings during the two-match series.
“In New Zealand I just never got going. That tour kind of passed me by,” he said. “It is frustrating when you go all that way, you train, and you just don’t turn up. It does happen. If you play 100-odd Test matches, there’s going to be little periods when you don’t score the runs. I’ve always managed to turn it around. The last six months, I’ve never been quite so inconsistent. I still averaged 47 last year. I could still average 47 this year.
“I go back to India in 2011, I was averaging five in the first two Test matches, ended up with 290 at Edgbaston, and the whole series changed. But since I’ve come home, I’ve started to look at my preparation. Have I got my preparation right? Do I need to change things? I will never sit here and say I’ve cracked the game or will ever be perfect. But there’s certain things that have gone too far this way or that way.”
Even at the age of 33, and on the cusp of equalling the world record for the number of consecutive Test appearances, Cook is still working out his game.
A new chief selector is in place, Ed Smith, and slaying one of the big three – Cook, Anderson or Stuart Broad – would be one way of stating that this is a new era.
But there are no alternatives jumping out to be picked and Cook will play his 153rd consecutive Test at Lord’s from May 24, drawing level with Allan Border. Trevor Bayliss, the England coach, challenged county cricketers to push for a place, but batting has been tough in the opening weeks of the season on damp pitches.
Sam Northeast has settled in well at Hampshire and scored 129 at the Oval this week. He has a good chance of a Test call-up if he can continue making runs. He plays against Cook on Friday when champions Essex play Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl. Watching Cook, James Vince and Northeast would be a good place for Smith to start.
The question for Cook is, does he still have the appetite to get in line, prod forward and keep grinding out the “six-hour hundreds” he accepts are going out of fashion in cricket?
“One thing I do know is that it doesn’t get any easier,” he said. “I remember talking to a psychologist watching Jacques Kallis, and he’d just scored his 12,000 runs, and thinking: ‘He’s all right, he’s cracked the game, it doesn’t matter what he does, he can just turn up and bat’. And the bloke said to me: ‘Mate, you’re wrong. If you ever get there, it’ll be just as hard as when you started’.”
Cook was careful not to criticise the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new Hundred tournament, but clearly worries about Test cricket, to which he dedicated his career and which plays to his strengths. Will another Cook come along? Will the young kids that Cook played cricket with yesterday at Rusthall St Paul’s Primary School near Tunbridge Wells, to launch the Yorkshire Tea and Chance to Shine National Cricket Week – which takes place later this summer – want to bat like him or smoke it out the ground like Jos Buttler?
“Why would you put yourself through the stresses and strains of the five-day game when you can play three-hour, or 2½-hour crash-bang-wallop,” he said. “For a deep-down cricket fan, it’s very different to what we know, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t go back the other way. For most, to earn a living, you’re going to have to play four-day cricket, too.”
Cook did not want to be drawn on the year-long bans handed out to Steve Smith and David Warner, but he did confirm that England had their suspicions over Australia’s handling of the ball during the Ashes.
“We did think in Perth, when the outfield was wet, they managed to get the ball reversing,” he said. “I didn’t see anything. We’ve been pretty good managing the ball, so that it can reverse swing at certain times.”
‘I have always managed to turn it around, but I will never say I have cracked the game’