Joe Root believes one last century from Alastair Cook at the Oval this week could be “written in the stars” as England look to send their former captain into Test retirement with a victory fitting of his record-breaking international career.
On a day when Cook offered a fresh take on the controversial sacking of Kevin Pietersen in 2014 – insisting he wanted the star batsman stood down for a spell, rather than exiled permanently – Root issued a rallying cry to his players before the fifth Test against India.
The series may have been won in Southampton last week but with Cook signing off before retirement, there is an extra incentive for a side who have not won a dead-rubber Testsince August 2011 against the same opposition.
Asked if the expected celebration of Cook’s 12-year career – one that began on debut in Nagpur with the first of his 32 Test centuries in the second innings – could prove a distraction, Root replied: “No I don’t think so. If anything it acts as a great motivator for the group.
“It means a lot to the whole dressing room and they will be desperate to do everything they can to give him a great send off. It would seem fitting for him to go out on a high personal note, not just as a team.
“Hopefully, he can soak up everything else that comes with this week and go out and deliver on the field. It would be nice to start and finish with a century. You never know, it might be written in the stars.”
Root wants no let up from his men. “My full focus has been on making sure we win this game,” he said. “It’s been an area we’ve not got right in the past and to beat the No 1 side in the world and make it 4-1 would send a really strong statement of where we’re at as a team and where we’re looking to go as a team.”
Cook’s time will doubtless be remembered for his national record of more than 12,000 Test runs, feats of epic endurance in the middle and a key role in the historic away victories against Australia in 2010-11 and India the following winter when captain.
But there is also his role in the removal of Pietersen from the side following the 2013-14 whitewashed Ashes defeat. The pair were portrayed as adversaries in some quarters and the issue threatened to derail Cook’s captaincy altogether until the appointment of Andrew Strauss as cricket director in 2015 saw talk of a comeback by Pietersen quashed for good.
In an interview with Test Match Special, due to be broadcast during lunch on day one of the fifth Test on Friday, Cook explained that while he was central to the original decision, his view was that the batsman should simply be left out for a spell; Paul Downton, then the managing director of the England and Wales Cricket Board, was in fact the one seeking permanent exclusion.
Comparing the situation to when Graham Gooch ousted David Gower from the Test team in 1992, Cook said: “I don’t know the details of that, but it is something Gooch is always associated with and I will always be associated with the KP one. I was involved in the decision at first, but the England captain doesn’t have the final say on hiring and firing. I agreed with it, but I said: ‘Why don’t we give him some time off? We can go away and maybe KP can come back later on.’
“Paul Downton wanted clarity – a clean break – because people would always be asking when is he coming back. You had to back his decisions because that’s what his job was.
“The fallout was pretty nasty and I don’t think the ECB handled it well or appreciated how social media worked very well then. I bore a lot of the brunt of it. I suppose that’s what being captain is.”
On his relationship with Pietersen now, Cook added: “I haven’t spoken to him since that day, but time is a great healer. We spent a lot of time together and created some amazing memories. The thing is, we never fell out. Since then, the internet has fallen out for us.
“As two blokes, if you take cricket out of it, we have never fallen out. He will have a different opinion, I’m sure.”
