HEADING FOR THE ROCKS
The Endeavour ran aground just a few miles off the coast of Australia. The ship, aptly named since it had served so well through the years beforehand, was holed below the water line. Captain Cook later admitted that he could, perhaps, have done a better job of steering around the reef. “I thought,” he wrote in his journal, “there could be no danger in standing on.” Stuck fast and shipping water, he decided to throw all the guns overboard in order to lighten the load. It worked. And so the Endeavour limped on, until it fetched up on a sandbank near the shore. The crew spent the six weeks in Australia plugging holes, patching the ruined hull together again.
When Alastair Cook led the England team on tour to New Zealand in early 2013, the PR people persuaded him to pose for a few photos in a tricorn hat. No need, now, to labour the comparison between the two Captain Cooks. The analogy above hardly needs to be expanded on. And it would be unfair, surely, to suggest that there are any too many parallels between the skipper who wrecked his ship on a reef in Australia and the one leading his team into this World Cup, and who has tossed, at different points, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, and Alex Hales over the side in an attempt to stay afloat.
Especially since the reef the first Cook crashed on was out of sight. Whereas the rocks that England are drifting towards have been looming on the horizon for a year now. Their next match, against Australia on 16 January, falls almost exactly 12 months after Cook hinted, for the first, last, and only time that he was thinking of quitting the ODI captaincy because he wasn’t sure he was the right man for the job. That was after a seven-wicket shellacking from Australia at the SCG. “We have kept losing,” Cook said in his press conference that night. “And I haven’t been able to turn it around.”
Five days later England won for the first time on that tour, at Perth. Cook changed his mind after that. He announced that he had decided he wanted to stay on, at least until the World Cup was over. “I think what I’ve learned over three years as one-day captain it would be wrong, so close to the World Cup, to change.” The truth is that he was right the first time round. But he said, instead, that his only mistake was to be so open with the press and public about his self-doubt.
Ever since, Cook has been engaged in the most dogged defence, in the face of extraordinary, and intolerable, pressure. That in itself must have taken a toll. And certainly he has looked like a spent man in Sri Lanka these past few weeks, finishing the ODI tour with a total of 119 runs at a measly average of 19 and a strike-rate of 67. But he is sticking to his line. He repeated it in September, at the end of the English summer, when he was asked if he was thinking of quitting.
We can surmise now that the selectors gave serious thought to asking him to stand down. Paul Downton says that they debated it for a week, and that James Whitaker made a point of visiting Cook at his home to discuss the issue with him. Evidently, Cook persuaded them that he should continue. And now England are committed to a tack that is carrying them, almost inexorably, towards an early exit from the World Cup. Most likely in the quarter-finals.
The team spent 2014 lurching from one series defeat to the next. As winter turned to spring turned to summer turned to autumn turned to winter again, England kept losing. And Cook has never looked like he was able, in his words, to “turn it around”. They lost to Australia, Sri Lanka twice, and India. The one series they won in that time was against West Indies back in March, when (cruel truth this) Cook wasn’t in the team. And all the while, the chorus crying out for a change of captaincy had grown louder. But Cook – and his bosses – seem to be hell-bent on holding course.
While members of the team have progressed under Cook’s leadership – if not necessarily because of it, which is what Downton has suggested – Cook’s own form has gone from bad to worse. His contribution in 2014 amounts to 523 runs in 20 innings, at an average of 27, and a strike rate of 71. He has scored a single 50, against India at the beginning of June. At his peak Cook averaged 42 in ODI cricket, at a strike rate of 81. That was back in 2012, when he scored centuries against Pakistan and West Indies in quick succession. That was before his mind was so cluttered, his body so weary, and while the opposing bowlers were still making the mistake of serving the shots on which he based his game, the cut and the pull.
Cook may be able to claim credit for creating an environment in which some of the younger players have been able to “express themselves”, to use the management’s phrase, but he must know, too, that judged on his form of the past 12 months he is entirely undeserving of a place in the batting line-up. Worse still, he is at risk of becoming an active hindrance to the team’s success, because the selectors are having to leave out other, better-equipped, batsmen so they can keep him in. The time squandered since Cook first thought about quitting should have been used instead to bed in Hales as an opening bat, and allowing a new captain to learn the ropes.
Michael Vaughan, in a moment of self-awareness, recently admitted that he now felt he had no business being in England’s one-day team during the final years of his own career. You wonder whether Cook will one day feel the same way about his tenure. Most of the press, much of the public, a measure, you suspect, of the players, are already resigned to the idea of England’s early exit. Success would be getting through the group stages, which is altogether too modest an ambition for a team with their resources. But Cook has carried on holding his ground, defending his captaincy with all the obstinacy with which he once did his wicket.
And in his stubbornness he is leading the listing ship right up on to rocks.
This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page, find ‘The Spin’ and follow the instructions
