If Alastair Cook had not known already, he must now realise just how difficult the job of international captaincy can be. Any satisfaction he might have gained from the runs he scored at Headingley on Friday would have been small in comparison with the brutality of the examination his tactics suffered after he chose to bowl first.
A final verdict may be premature — and things could change with a good performance in the third one-day international against Sri Lanka today — but England’s decision to split the captaincy among three men, two of whom have no clear-cut credentials for the job, has not started well. It looked a gamble when it was unveiled and it seems even more of one now.
Cook was already under fire from former England captains Michael Atherton, who argues that he is not worth his place in the 50-over side, and Sir Ian Botham, who fears that his exposure to the ODI format might lead to an unravelling of his sublime form in the Test arena. Now the critics are poring over his field placings.
Stuart Broad took a drubbing on his debut as Twenty20 captain and Andrew Strauss is struggling for runs in Tests, the one format left to him. Last week, his batch of single-figure scores continued with Middlesex. Like a complex piece of machinery, the greater the number of working parts, the greater the chance of malfunction. With three captains, at least one is likely to commit a strategic howler or be out of form. As long as that is happening, the whole system attracts scrutiny.
The focus on a captain is relentless, in any case. “One of the first things you discover is that not only do decisions have to be made but everything has to be explained,” one former England captain said. “You are asked about plans you’ve not even had a chance to formulate.” Demands multiply, hence Nasser Hussain asking Cook before the Leeds toss how his time-management was going. “I’ll get back to you on that,” Cook might have replied.
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A key early lesson for any captain is trusting instinct. “You have to be your own man, follow your own hunches and lead the side as you see fit,” Strauss once said. “You have to be true to yourself because that is what has got you into this position in the first place.”
When Michael Vaughan was appointed one-day captain in 2003, with almost no previous experience of leading a side, he hoped for two years to learn the ropes but within seven weeks Hussain had resigned as Test captain and Vaughan was thrust into overall charge. A vital component in the current experiment is Strauss staying around long enough for Cook and Broad — respectively aged 26 and 25 — to find their feet.
Because of the year-round international schedule, players are often asked to learn captaincy on the hoof. Twelve days ago, New Zealand appointed Ross Taylor, whose first-class experience as a skipper amounted to one match. He expressed the hope that he had learnt from playing under Shane Warne in the IPL. And last month AB de Villiers, who like Broad had last led a team at school before the national selectors came knocking, was made South Africa’s ODI and Twenty20 captain.
“Captaining South Africa was definitely not one of my goals,” De Villiers admitted. “But I started believing I could do it when Graeme Smith [previously captain in all formats] said I had a lot of leadership qualities. He said I should take more responsibility, act more like a leader and talk more in team meetings.”
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Similarly, India elevated MS Dhoni to the Twenty20 and ODI posts in 2007 (when he was the age Cook is now) with only the recommendation of Sachin Tendulkar to go on; Dhoni had captained no match of consequence. Yet under him India have risen to No 1 Test side and World Cup winners.
Australia’s faith in Michael Clarke’s leadership abilities rests on what he has done in limited-overs games. As he takes control of the Test team, the question is not so much Clarke’s grasp on tactics as on the loyalty of teammates and public, many of whom might have preferred Brad Haddin.
Of England’s past 10 Test captains, dating back to Atherton, only Alec Stewart and Strauss had regularly led a county side. In earlier eras the job usually went to men who had cut their teeth winning championships. Hugh Morris, the ECB’s managing director, sought to address this issue, highlighted in the 2007 Schofield Report into the 5-0 Ashes defeat, by setting up a series of leadership projects. The ECB would argue that Cook and Broad, while having little practical experience of on-field captaincy, have displayed leadership abilities in a series of technical and tactical scenarios presented by the team director, Andy Flower, as well as on bonding trips such as those to Flanders and Bavaria.
James Anderson also shone in these exercises, as did Eoin Morgan, whose appointment as Twenty20 vice-captain is recognition of his potential. But Morgan, who confirmed his wish to captain England one day, would be no less of a gamble than anybody else. He led Irish youth sides but has captained Middlesex teams only five times in five years.
Flower might say that by encouraging all his players to think like leaders, each is much closer to being a leader before he is ever appointed. There is also a view that captaining a county side is so far removed from leading a team in international cricket as to be of limited value. It might also be said that, thanks to England having such a big backroom staff, captaining the national side has become easier than it once was, when the team leader was all but on his own save for an assistant manager or two, as in Mike Brearley’s day.
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Cook returns today to Lord’s, where a month ago he took 96 and 106 off Sri Lanka’s bowlers in a Test but drew criticism from some quarters — criticism Cook himself admits was not unjustified — for adding 26 in two hours on the final morning when England were preparing for a declaration. He will want to demonstrate, as he did to a degree on Friday, that he can put his foot down if required.
Brearley, who has advised Cook on the pitfalls of the job and believes he will make a success of leading the one-day side, asked two questions of a prospective captain in his seminal book The Art of Captaincy: “How well does a candidate know the game (and how ready is he to learn)? And, secondly, will he be able to motivate the others?” That is the challenge Cook faces now.