Alastair Cook has admitted he does not know whether the Ashes series will be his last as Test captain and plans to sit down with Trevor Bayliss to discuss the matter at the end of the summer.
On Friday at Lord’s, Cook met the England head coach for the first time, the day after the Australian’s arrival in London, and the pair were due to dine together in Birmingham, along with the assistant coach Paul Farbrace, before the squad’s early flight to Spain for a four-day training camp.
Following a turbulent 18-month spell for England it has been suggested that – win or lose – Cook may opt to drop back into the ranks after the five-Test series against Australia and continue his career as the country’s leading run-scorer in Test cricket.
Asked if he was looking to captain England during the winter tours to the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, Cook said: “I don’t know. Ever since we lost the Ashes 5-0 in Australia I have taken every series as an individual event.”
Cook, who lost the one-day captaincy before this winter’s World Cup, added: “We all saw how quickly it changed at Christmas last year. I am just going to do this series – we have such an opportunity to play Australia here with cricket hitting the headlines for the right reasons and a real good feel factor and vibe about the game. We have got that to look forward to. Let’s look at that and not worry about anything else.
“Come August I will sit down with everyone, with Trevor, and we will plot a path forward or we will see. But just before an Ashes series is not the right time to talk.”
The Australia spinner Nathan Lyon has described England’s Ashes camp as a holiday but Cook disagreed, viewing the trip – which will focus on fielding, fitness and strategy – as the perfect chance to bond with Bayliss following the briefest of contact to date. Before Friday, the pair had spoken for just 10 minutes on the phone since the coach was appointed at the end of May.
“The relationship with the coach is massive,” said Cook. “I’ll spend a lot of time with him [in Spain] and I think the guys will spend a lot of time with him – that’s the most important thing. The guys have played a lot of cricket, done a lot of training, been pretty much nonstop since the start of the Windies tour [in April]. So I think it is about meeting Trevor, talking about what will happen over the next seven weeks. It won’t be a holiday.”
