So What Did We Expect Him To Say…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/7880285.stm
Alastair Cook has been defending the indefensible as it was his turn to be thrown to the media hounds in advance of the next test in Antigua starting on Friday. In it he shines a light on the mentality of the English batting order
“We cannot act too hastily. The players are ultimately responsible, we’ve got to take it on the chin,” he said.
“We hope we can get a fresh start when we get to Antigua.”
You hope for a fresh start, Cook? Lord heavens above, every time you go to the crease is a fresh start and by my calculation, Ali old boy, you’ve had 23 fresh starts since your last test ton, and that is not good enough. How many more fresh starts do you think you, or any of your team mates deserve. How about giving someone fresh a start?
“We cannot act too hastily”. This is brilliant. Everyone and his aunt knows that England’s main problem is scoring big runs. Even on the flattest of decks we seem to struggle. We’ve not got about a team, South Africa at Lord’s excepted, for ages – oh sorry, I forgot Napier and Strauss’s 177. But if England were to kick out half their top order it wouldn’t have been too hasty. Cook’s assertion, which it seems to be, that the call for heads is only a reaction just now to the 51 all out is daft. Some of us could see this coming a mile off. In Sri Lanka not so long ago we had the warning – http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/slveng/engine/match/291224.html – when the wheels fell off on a pitch Sri Lanka had made just under 500, and Chaminda Vaas scored more than the England 1st innings. We had another warning at Hamilton – http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/nzveng/engine/current/match/300442.html – when we were dismissed for 110 when we should have saved the game. It appears young Al doesn’t seem to be alive to what we’ve been thinking…
The current batting unit has come in for heavy criticism after it collapsed in Adelaide during the 2006-07 Ashes tour to hand Australia victory, and was dismissed for just 81 against Sri Lanka in Galle last winter, but Cook denies that England’s batsmen are too comfortable.
“If you don’t perform then you know what is going to happen,” he said.
“If it happens again, then things have to change. But those are three isolated incidents over three years, so it is not as though it is happening every week.”
Really. You think that it is just those three occasions that we are bringing up? I’m leaving, inevitably, KP out of the equation here because he is the only batsman as an automatic choice these days. Can I throw in, in the space of the last twelve months the following:
The Third Test At Napier – http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/nzveng/engine/current/match/300444.html – when England found themselves at 4 for 3 and 36 for 4 and 125 for 5 on a pitch we went on to get 467 in the second dig. So what that we dug ourselves out for a score of 253 – that was down to KP and Stuart Broad. New Zealand’s attack was hardly terrorising.
Or how about this collapse at Trent Bridge last summer – the first five wickets back in the shed for 86 – http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/engvnz/engine/match/296902.html – and again KP and Broad saved our skins, aided by no longer with us Tim Ambrose. Just the three occasions is it, Ali?
Or how about this one – http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/engvnz/engine/match/296901.html – where the middle order subsided and gave New Zealand a big lead on a pitch they scored 380 on. So what if in all three games we came back to win, because in the big games, against better opposition, you can’t have a bad innings. Because…
Against South Africa, 203 doesn’t cut it – http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/engvrsa/engine/match/296910.html – and none of the batsmen passed 50. In the following game http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/engvrsa/engine/match/296911.html – 231 wasn’t cutting it either. There are numerous examples of the batsmen failing to capitalise on good pitches, but Cook either has a bad memory or doesn’t want to focus.
Cook goes on to point out that if he’d converted 3 of his 8 half centuries into tons then we would not have been having this discussion. As a statement of the bleeding obvious, that is up there, but Cook is not focussing on the right thing. We need his 50s to be 150s. Not 100, but the big scores, the intimidating scores, the “will we ever get this guy out” scores?
Alastair Cook needs to sort himself out. He has a technique problem so obvious it is painful, and many times he seems unsure where to score. The West Indies does funny things to our openers’ techniques – at the start of the last tour Trescothick and Vaughan barely scored a run, but we had fighters like Hussain, Butcher and Thorpe in our middle order. No Bell there.
Like all the England players there is no evidence that they are truly humbled, and no admissions that they have not performed for a long time now. It is a mindset of delusion and someone needs to snap them out of it.
