What has happened to English batsman Alastair Cook? That is the question nagging at the back of every cricket lover’s mind.
The man who has already posted cricket records including being the youngest batsman ever to reach 7000 Test runs and being the English batsman with the most Test hundreds has now been stripped of his One Day International captaincy.
And for a good reason – he scored just 109 runs in six ODIs opening the batting for England against Sri Lanka in November and December 2014. This series included just a tiny portion of the amount of scores under 50 Cook has produced since the 2013 Ashes in England finished.
The left-hander has never seemed completely comfortable at ODI level, yet has still managed 92 ODIs as an opener in his career due mainly to his outstanding Test performances.
Despite the gap between his Test and ODI performances, it had always seemed like Cook was in England’s best side. When Cook took over the ODI captaincy from Andrew Strauss in 2010, questions were raised over whether he could lead the team by performance in the shorter form the way Strauss had.
These questions were soon answered as Cook found some sharp form with two centuries soon after being handed the captaincy. It seemed for a little while as if it wouldn’t be long before Cook would match his ODI record with his Test match record.
Wrong…
Everything was going Cook’s way over the next couple of years once he was given the leadership role in Test matches also.
He then piled up the runs against South Africa, India and New Zealand and there seemed to be no doubt whatsoever that Cook would finish as just as good as in Test cricket.
Cook then led England to the No. 1 ranking in both ODIs and Tests in 2011-12 but little did he know that it would be all downhill from there.
It all started at the 2013 Ashes in England. Even though Alastair Cook led England to a 3-1 series win, Australia showed spirit in many occasions and it seemed as if that series was just a warm up for the Ashes series in Australia just months later.
Cook had an okay series, if not great, finishing with three half-centuries in 277 runs at an average of 27.70.
He then had a break in the ODI series, leaving the captaincy to Eoin Morgan in a series Australia ended up winning 2-1. Cook then led England to Australia in November 2013. The rest, obviously, is history.
Australia wins the Ashes 5-0, Mitchell Johnson bowls like never before, takes 37 wickets in the series and terrorises many an English batsman, just one English batsman scores a century during the series, three English players’ careers are wrecked and so on…
A team is only ever as good as its leader though and Alastair Cook was hardly leading by performance.
He finished with 246 runs at 24.60 and when you compare Cook’s record to Aussie captain Michael Clarke’s record (363 runs at 40.33) the gap between the two leaders’ performances certainly made an impact on the result of the series.
Australia’s opening bowling partnership of Ryan Harris and Mitchell Johnson well and truly had the better of Alastair Cook throughout the Ashes series, finding faults in his foot-movement and stroke-play especially early in his innings’.
Cook fought hard and managed three half-centuries during the tour, but could never manage a breakthrough ton. The 30-year old then continued his bad form with the bat in the ODI series, not even mustering a half-century in five knocks.
This was when Cook’s one-day captaincy starting being questioned again.
Since that Ashes tour, Cook has continued to struggle at international level. He has been acceptable in Test matches since then with 376 runs at 37.60 but in ODIs Cook has averaged just 27 since the tour with only one solitary fifty in 15 games.
England have been sticking with him as skipper and opening batsman, just waiting for the match in which Cook finally relieves the English public with one of the trademark fighting centuries to get his side of to a flyer that he used to produce so often. However, after his miserly ODI series against Sri Lanka, England couldn’t stick with the man they had relied upon to lead the team for years any longer.
Alastair Cook has been out of form for so long that it is hard to see him getting the ODI leadership role back any time soon. The World Cup will most likely give him his last chance in the shorter format.
He then has more opportunities to get back into nick in Test with series coming up against West Indies and New Zealand before another round of the Ashes.
Soon enough, England’s record-breaking opener will get back to his brilliant best. Surely…
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