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If Alastair Cook is convinced he is the man to lead England to the next World Cup, purely on the basis they finally had a victory in Perth against the Australia A side, then the problems in English cricket are more deeply ingrained than any of us initially thought.
Is Alastair Cook the right man to lead England? Maybe.
As a perfectly happy Australian cricket supporter enjoying watching my team win (for a change) and basking in the glory that is English mediocrity, I genuinely do not particularly care.
Get the Kiwi (Ben Stokes) to lead them.
(Although Stokesy, mate, you just lost eight in a row, who on earth are you kidding giving a send off to James Faulkner? How did that sledge go? “Let that be a lesson mate, nobody dominates the English cricket team nine matches in a row!”)
They can hand the captaincy over to Ravi Bopara if they’re so inclined.
This article is not intended as a debate about who should captain the English cricket team. In many respects, it is not even an article about whether or not Alastair Cook should continue to be the captain.
But it is extremely curious – to be honest it is downright mind-boggling – that the victory in Perth is what has convinced Alastair Cook he is the man England need at the helm.
Make no mistake, the 57-run margin between the teams in Perth is deceiving. Australia fielded a B-side.
Forget for a moment the departures of Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin (gee, hasn’t Matthew Wade really hit some hard times?), Shane Watson and David Warner, what about the bowlers who were not playing?
Peter Siddle and Ryan Harris surely are in the frame for frontline duties in coloured clothing. Clint McKay, our best one-day bowler of 2013, is out injured.
Meanwhile, James Pattinson is coming back from injury, and Mitchell Johnson? What does he care, he just routinely probed England rectally in the Tests, so he’s just keeping warm for South Africa.
And that’s before you even factor in the pedestrian captaincy on offer from George Bailey.
So, the Australian team that took the field on Friday, quality players though they may be, are not exactly the best of the best that Australia has to offer.
England were not even that convincing either. You take their magnificent final ten overs out of England’s innings, England are posting a pretty poor total that in the end we probably would have covered.
If not for the free-swinging antics of Jos Buttler, the English batting wasn’t exactly setting the second-grade world on fire.
Getting to the Australian batting performance, as generally poor as it was, we were scoring at eight an over for the opening deliveries. And one of the openers was Shaun Marsh!
We still managed 259, despite Glenn ‘the Big Show’ Maxwell not firing! (Seriously, who on earth came up with that as his nickname? That has to be a gee-up.)
For me though, the proof that one victory will not a summer make for England was their inability to convincingly close out the game.
England should have won the game three times before Pattinson finally edged one through to Buttler.
Stokes dropped a catch, England didn’t review an edge through to Buttler, and I’m pretty sure there was yet another skied effort on the last wicket that landed safely.
All of this while Alastair Cook was visibly grimacing at every missed chance. 60-odd runs up, one wicket left? Yep, even he had doubts they could still win.
Amazingly, England stumbled over the line, with 316 runs on the board, against the rest of the best of the rest that Australia had to offer.
But Alastair Cook thinks he’s killing it.
Really? No, no, just stop and ask: Really!?
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Cook after the game. I’m putting that in the category of ‘Understatement of 2014′, and we are only three weeks into the year.
“We know the series has gone but the thought of losing 10-0 – the prospect was there starting today.” Oh my goodness, this man is as inspiring as throat cancer.
“I think, what I’ve learnt over three years as one-day captain, it would be wrong so close to the World Cup to change.” What, like when Ricky Ponting was appointed captain 12 months before the 2003 World Cup?
Alastair Cook is clearly out of sorts at the moment. He’s in orbit. Forget the Rover on Mars, I want updates from ‘Ally’ about how things are on Pluto.
If he is not intelligent enough to be realistic about a solitary victory after a seemingly endless series of international losses, the wonder isn’t that England have lost so many matches recently, the wonder is they haven’t lost by even more.
Alastair Cook has bigger problems than whether he is captain. The way he’s playing, he should look at Steve Waugh and just hope he is going to stay in the side.
And regarding his credentials to captain the England team on a long-term basis? Well, if he’s putting the victory in Perth on his CV, he will need to pad that out with big words. And take some advise from Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde: write it on pink paper and make it scented.
Alastair Cook ain’t convincing anyone. Except Alastair Cook.
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