London: Alastair Cook was — or, for one more week, is — one of England’s finest half-dozen opening batsmen, though neither Sir Jack Hobbs nor Sir Leonard Hutton need dread a tap on the shoulder from the selectors of England’s all-time Test XI.
Cook never dominated bowling like either knight. But he had facets of greatness, especially durability which has defied all precedent.
Australia’s Allan Border had played 153 Tests in a row, but he was a middle-order batsman, exposed to the West Indian fast bowlers in the 1980s but not to the brand new ball. Cook faced new-ball bowlers for 159 Tests in succession (given a handful at No 3) without injury, without illness and without the self-doubt which gnaws English opening batsmen more than any other kind — because they fail more often in home conditions — until it gnawed him to pieces this summer.
Cook’s other hallmark, before the durability was evident, was his imperturbability — at least until the farewell at the Oval perhaps becomes too emotional. The one time he has been seen ruffled on a cricket field was the nearest he came to being injured, when Mitchell Johnson’s bouncer in the Adelaide Test of 2013/14 rocketed towards his head. Even then, so swift are his reactions, he got a bat in front of his face, if only to be caught at fine leg.
Being 33, Cook has a hinterland, unlike today’s academy players: now sheep-farming, once a chorister. Singing in St Paul’s Cathedral for large audiences conditioned his temperament to walking out to bat in front of capacity crowds. After taking guard, he would square-cut or hit through his most favoured midwicket, stroll a few paces towards square leg, before bending to his task again as a shepherd leans over a gate to regard his flock.
Runs opener had scored in 2010-11 Ashes series
This imperturbability, this stoicism that allowed him to soak up pressure all day, Cook shares with three others in the pantheon of England’s opening batsmen. Not Hobbs and Hutton — both had more nervous energy, as professionals in a still-amateur milieu — but Herbert Sutcliffe, Geoffrey Boycott and Cook’s mentor, Graham Gooch.
Cook’s career-graph went irrevocably down when bowlers, having pitched short and angled across him, wised up: they drew him onto his front foot, where his height and stiffness stopped him getting his head over the ball.
Thus he had more of a technical limitation than anybody else in the pantheon. But he was clever enough to conceal it until he had scored 766 runs in the 2010-11 series in Australia, and three centuries in his first three Tests as official captain in India in 2012-13.
Cook faced new ball bowlers in succession
His record was least good in South Africa, whose Morne Morkel found his weak spot like Ishant Sharma this summer, going round the wicket and drawing him forward. If it was not so good in New Zealand either, it was largely because his tour earlier this year was an omen of his end: only 23 runs in four innings, drawn forward by Trent Boult.
For more than four years, Cook’s captaincy was safe, sound and long-suffering. He never lost his rag with his bowlers or fielders, or even manifested disappointment with them: his flocks will be contented if he treats them like he did his players. His finest hours came in India, when England won the Test series for the first time since 1984/85, and at Trent Bridge in the Ashes of 2013, when he was effectively down to one bowler, James Anderson, as Brad Haddin and Australia’s tail-enders made a dash for the line. Even then his outward calm was unruffled.
Centuries in three Tests left-hander scored in India
A lovely part of his retirement is that Cook is going with the rest of his game intact. He has been England’s safest slip fielder this summer, even if that is not saying much by comparison with India’s KL Rahul. While England’s second slips — whether Dawid Malan or Jos Buttler or Joe Root — have clung on to half their chances, Cook has caught his share at first slip, including one voted the TMS “champagne moment” in the fourth Test at Southampton. He was happier still when taking two catches out of position, at deep midwicket at Trent Bridge and deep cover on Sunday, boyish in his delight.
And herein lies one superlative, which can be accorded to Cook. No England captain has slotted back better into the ranks and rocked the boat less.
The proof is how he never stood on ceremony or seniority in the field. England’s most senior player was ready to stand at short leg for Moeen Ali, like the most junior pro, and take the blows — the finest and least egotistic of team men until he called it an end.
