To captain a Cricket team is a tougher job than, for example, captaining a Rugby or Football team. When your team is fielding, it is the captain who has the pressure upon them. Every bowling change, field placement comes down to his decision. Obviously plans are made with the coach for the opposition, but as the recent England v India test match at Trent Bridge showed, taking wickets is not always easy; both sides failed to knock over the no 11 in a fashion they would have expected.
In those situations it is the captain who has to decide what to try and when and he has to be worth his individual place for whatever he was originally selected, Batting or Bowling. If captaining a cricket team is a tough job, to be the captain of England is harder still.
In recent times England have enjoyed some unparalleled success under the leadership of Michael Vaughan and Andrew Strauss, also there have been some crushing low points under Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen. Nothing against Flintoff and Pietersen, whose individual roles in English cricket have been huge and are players whose celebrity began to transcend Cricket into the more mainstream culture.
England seem to have taken the approach of making the best player the captain, but being captain seems in itself to be a poisonous chalice. In the days of Michael Atherton, Graham Gooch, possibly even Nasser Hussian there probably wasn’t a great deal of competition for the job. But take a look at the individual form of recent captains when they had been given the captaincy.
Vaughan and Strauss, whilst just opening batsmen, were ranked in the higher echelons of the official rankings. Following being made captain their production dropped: when once good starts were turned into 50’s and those 50’s into 100’s, those 100’s were not as common, those 50’s became dismissals for 40 odd instead.
I mention this because England seem to be going the same way again with Captain Alastair Cook. Once again he had established himself as one of the world’s best prior to being made captain and now seems to have lost some of his own production. It is true to say that all players go through spells where they seem to lose it for a while, and in many cases those players end up having time away from the international stage whilst they work their technique. However, as a captain you do not really have that option, any personal demons that may need to be confronted need to be faced in the full glare of the watching public. Whilst doing that, the captain still has the captains responsibilities in the field weighing them down as well.
The general media seem to weigh in at this time normally, and criticise from behind their laptops, but please before we go any further down that road with Alastair Cook, let’s all take a step back and give the man space. Compared to some of the reasonably settled and successful teams of recent years, England are a team pretty much I’m transition now, with several youngsters making their way through. Joe Root, Nick Compton for example, the retirements of Flintoff, Graeme Swan have left big holes in the bowling attack,arguably these were previously the top 2 options when it came to knocking over the stubborn tail.
In Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson, Cook stills has 2 outstanding attacking options, but the now common middle order collapse is a big headache for any skipper to work out how to bowl to a field, how many runs is enough? As opener, Cook cannot be blamed for the failings of other batsmen. You would be allowed to talk about his own current form with the bat, which to his own high standards us currently poor.
Captain Cook though is a genuine world-class batsmen and runs will come back to him, what he needs is greater support from the team to back him up and give him those options. A world class spinner would be a major boost for him to be able to use.
Let’s bear in mind that it does take anybody taking over the captaincy of a team time to settle into the role, even if Cook had Strauss, Pietersen, Flintoff, Pietersen, Hoggard, Harminson still it would take a personal transition, but add into the mix a team itself going through a time of change, the difficulty ramps up.
They say of course form is temporary and class is permanent and this applies here. English cricket is changing, Twenty 20 games have changed the expectations of many people to the game, but Test cricket is and should remain the pinnacle. I urge the cricket writers, the public, the ECB itself, please be patient in these times of change, keep the faith with the skipper as a new team emerges, because if we sail with Captain Alastair Cook he will lead us back to the top of the Cricket World.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @robbienewell. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LWOSWorld and @Lastwordonsport and liking our Facebook page.
For the latest in sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
Main Photo:
