This has been a strange week in the life of the England team. A heavy series defeat to India immediately gave way to speculation about the future of the captain Alastair Cook, and nothing Cook said publicly scotched the notion that he was considering stepping down after four years.
Conversely, he appeared to buy himself time by suggesting that nothing would be decided before a routine de-brief with Andrew Strauss, director of England cricket, sometime in the new year, though no specific date is set. Maybe it will be an appointment he does not need.
Cook’s personality is the key. He is a stubborn so-and-so who does not like losing or being proved wrong. When an array of former England captains called for his head two years ago, he wavered, before digging in, staying on and eventually regaining the Ashes. When he was axed from the one-day team ahead of the World Cup, he was stung to the core. One thing is for sure: when he goes as Test captain, as much as possible he will do so on his terms.
Were he to go now, he could just about do this. Losing in India was to be expected, as were the reasons why: the relative weakness of the spin attack and a shortage of patience among batsmen who like to gallop. Nor is anyone of significance now calling for his head (critics don’t like to be wrong twice). But if he stayed, he would have to do so until the end of next winter’s Ashes and how the next 12 months might play out for him and the team is uncertain.
As Cook will be acutely aware, this is a team that have been less than the sum of their parts for a while. There is a persuasive case for freshening things up and a six-month gap before the next Test is a natural opportunity.
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Cook could sell a resignation as “the best thing for English cricket”, which were his words for what he and Strauss would need to discuss. This would apply not only to the running of the team but Cook’s own batting; in a career that has lasted ten years and could have five to go, that is not an insignificant consideration. Cook is an unusually selfless cricketer and would do what is best for the greater good.
Cook’s pronouncements this past week have been notable for their omissions. He has said little about what the team needs to do in the future, a clue perhaps that this may soon no longer be his territory. One time he did was in speaking about James Anderson’s injury problems: “I think we [are] going to have to manage him a bit more than we have managed him in Test matches.”
A couple of his press conferences have been positively giddy, certainly compared to the gloominess after the other heavy defeat of his reign, in Australia. He delighted in teasing journalists about their life as experts-in-hindsight, “the best captains you can ever be sat 150 yards away with cups of tea, biscuits, computers, twitter, you name it”, and ticked off a local reporter for “rolling his eyes” when Cook claimed England had competed with India “a lot of times”.
This was not the man conditioned to commanding respect through weight of runs; the man who once said, “You can’t argue with a bloke who’s scored 10,000 runs.”
Sadly, he could not transfer this freewheeling approach to his batting on the first morning in Chennai, when another scratchy innings ended with Ravindra Jadeja dismissing him for the fifth time in the series.
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After a perennial struggle to find a reliable opening partner, Cook, who turns 32 on Christmas Day, may feel he has glimpsed his own mortality with the emergence of Haseeb Hameed, aged 19, and Keaton Jennings, 24, both capable of long Test careers at the top of the order.
The England captaincy wears down its incumbents and Cook has felt the effects, averaging 41.5 in three years since marking his ascendancy with a flurry of big scores, whereas previously he averaged 49.2, but the real impact has been on his capacity to churn out centuries.
Since the start of the 2013 Ashes, he has managed a hundred once every 17 innings, having previously operated at a rate of one every seven. Cook must have wondered whether relinquishing the job would enable him to flip this trend. Just as Anderson’s late years may need managing, so might Cook’s.
Cook is going to return to the ranks to play under someone else, the only question is when, and as Cook has himself said this past week that Joe Root is ready to step up, only Cook’s personal appetite to remain as captain now stands in the way.
Quite what state that appetite is in, Cook has skillfully avoided saying. But were he to now come out and say that he was, after all, carrying on, he could be perceived as blocking the path of the man he has just anointed. Woe betide him then if Root scores runs and he does not.
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Is Root ready? He has captained only three championship matches but has played 53 Tests, which is more than Michael Atherton (27), Michael Vaughan (31) or Nasser Hussain (39) at the time they were appointed, and only two fewer than Strauss. “You never know until you actually experience it,” said Cook, who had 83 Tests behind him. “You are thrown in at the deep end and you sink or swim. It is as simple as that. Nothing can prepare you for it. He [Joe] is ready because he is a clued-up guy. He has the respect of the changing-room.”
The captaincy might actually give Root the extra sense of responsibility he needs to end his habit of getting out between 50 and 100.
With seven Tests in nine weeks, this has been a gruelling tour, made harder for Cook by leaving his family soon after the birth of his second child. Even so, if he wants to stay on, he has a funny way of showing it. And if he has been merely reluctant to articulate a desire to stay for fear that he might be axed, then he should surely get out before that axe falls.