Cook sleeping a lot easier without the England captaincy
Alastair Cook was never a man who was going to give up the Test captaincy easily. But after his first match back in the ranks under Joe Root at Lord’s last week, the opener admits he is sleeping a lot easier and looking forward to scoring plenty more runs for England.
Cook, who resigned in February following the 4-0 series defeat in India late last year, always knew things would initially feel strange back among the rank and file after four years and a record 59 Tests as captain.
However, both the 32-year-old and his successor enjoyed a successful first Investec Test against South Africa at Lord’s as England sealed a comprehensive 211-run win.
Root, fittingly, stole the show by scoring a brilliant 190 in his first innings in the job. Cook, after failing on the opening day, ground out a determined second-innings 69 on a difficult pitch – his 54th Test half-century – to help set-up England’s victory inside four days.
“It was different,” Cook admitted ahead of Friday’s second Test at Trent Bridge. “You spend three or four years being the focal point of everything and thinking about decisions and selection. After a while it has an effect on you.
“I don’t have to make those decisions any more. You just are a bit more calm. You’re not going to bed the night before thinking about what you’re going to do at the toss. You’re not going to bed thinking have I picked the right side? Now it’s someone else’s decision.
“You’re so stuck in it when you’re actually captain, when you step back you realise just playing is a very different thing to being captain.” There have been, insists Cook, subtle changes on the field. “The conversations at first and second slip were no different as they were when I was captain and Joe was vice-captain, with ideas bouncing off each other,” he says. “It was very similar to before just with roles reversed. The shock was when Ben Stokes [Root’s vice-captain] told me to move fielding positions, then you realise life has changed.”
Its for Root’s overall performance in that first week in the job, Cook revealed his successor did show signs of nerves. “In that first net session I don’t think I’ve ever seen him bat as badly as that,” he says. “He came back the next day and it was normal again. I haven’t really spoken to him about his first week but the way he handled himself was pretty good.”
Root’s 190 at Lord’s was the highest score by an England captain in his first Test leading the side, beating the 176 Cook made against India at Ahmedabad back in 2012.
“I didn’t know that was a record,” says Cook. “But that probably won’t be the first of mine he breaks.”
With 30 Test hundreds and 11,129 Test runs, Root has some way to overhaul Cook’s most treasured records – England’s leading century-maker and runscorer of all-time.
However, one even bigger landmark – Sachin Tendulkar’s 15,921 Test runs - is not out of the question for Cook if he can continue playing for four or five years.
Gray-Nicolls, Cook’s bat sponsor, this week posted a Tweet with the hashtag #CatchinSachin. Yet the man himself, who needs 4793 runs to overhaul the Indian great, is playing down such talk.
“That’s not come from me!” Cook said. “That is a long way off. You just do not know what happens in sport do you? I’ve never really set targets, certainly not publicly and not that many privately.” So what does keep Cook motivated to carry on? “I quite like playing cricket actually if I’m being brutally honest,” he says. “It’s an amazing thing we do and, yes, there’s some tough times along the way. But the thought of playing here at Trent Bridge on Friday in front of a full house – it’s not going to be around forever, so that’s what motivates me.”
There was a gap of more than six months between Cook’s final Test as captain against India at Chennai in December and the first Test of this English summer against South Africa. It was a period of time that fully allowed Cook to get over the loss of the captaincy.
“I think it would have been very different if I’d gone from not being Test captain to playing again two weeks later,” he says. “I was pretty clear coming back from India I wasn’t going to be captain and those two weeks when I was kind of making the decision didn’t change it. “It was strange when it was announced. Everyone said I felt relief. I didn’t feel relief, I felt sadness for a while. THE INDEPENDENT