England v India:
5th Test, Day 4
Farewell
Chef
September 10th 2018
It is a long time since I have written in this Blog, having ended-up
dedicating my efforts elsewhere. Today though, we have seen the end of an
England era. And it is the first of a series of awaited retirements that will
change fundamentally the core of the England side.
A year ago, if you had picked one of the England Big Three as being the
first to go, almost certainly it would have been Jimmy Anderson. He is the
oldest, he has long-term injury problems and, at his age, he is always just one
injury away from being forced to retire. Or, possibly, you would have picked
Stuart Broad: always an easy target with a section of England fandom, who
accuse him of becoming less and less effective and producing performances just
often enough to avoid being dropped. Few people would have picked Alastair Cook
as being the first of the trio to retire. After all, at 33 he should be just
about in his prime as a batsman. He has been relieved of the crippling load of
the captaincy and was firmly expected to enjoy five years of destroying attacks
around the world, before hanging up his bat.
What has happened though is that twelve years of expectation and
carrying the England batting have taken its toll. Twice in the past, as
Alastair Cook will freely admit, he was playing for his career, but never has
he suffered a sustained slump as he has suffered in the last two years. Despite
two double centuries, one of them unbeaten, he was averaging just 33.8 over 27
Tests. When he got in, he was making it count, but he was rarely getting in. Mentally,
the edge was not quite there and he knew it. There was just one fifty since
that immense 244* at Melbourne and only three times in sixteen innings had he reached
thirty. Only ten innings elapsed between his monumental 243 against the West
Indies and the Melbourne innings, but he passed twenty-three just once in those
ten innings. Up until the innings at Edgbaston, in mid-August 2017, he was
making significant scores regularly: ten times in twenty-three innings he
passed forty; six of them converted into at least a fifty, even if the big
scores were not coming as often as he would have liked.
Since his watershed moment at Edgbaston though, he has sustained a
continuous battering in Australia, followed by some awkward pitches against
skilled bowlers in New Zealand and England. As he has said, he is running on
empty. The skill is there, the desire is there, but the body and mind cannot
quite take advantage because fatigue has dulled the senses to the point of
making him no better than mere mortals. Certainly, for the first time in many
years, it was not a given that Alastair Cook would be the first name on the
teamsheet for the winter series: in fact, not everyone was convinced that he
should be in the squad, because his form did not merit it; there were growing
suggestions that it was time to look at candidates to replace him, without them
having the pressure of walking out with him – would Keaton Jennings have
struggled as badly had he had Mark Stoneman, or Nick Gubbins, or James Vince at
the other end? How much did seeing an England legend struggling at the other
end, affect his partners?
All the elements were there for a Greek tragedy. The last Test of his
England career. The weight of expectation. The distraction of a heavily pregnant
wife whose due date was today. Alice Cook is not just an ordinary wife: she has
been far more than just a partner; she has been a massive influence in his
career and in his career decisions and the greatest support that he has had.
Even Bradman, coming to the wicket to a standing ovation and with tears in his
eyes, fell for a duck because he barely saw the ball that Eric Hollies sent
down. It would have been so easy to prod blindly at the ball, send it to the
waiting ring of catchers behind and to depart immediately, as Don Bradman did,
to another standing ovation and the security of the pavilion.
That Cook was able to put away the distractions, ignore the fact that
Alice might go into labour at any moment, ignore the fact that everyone
expected him to go out with a century and go out and bat, with the lightness of
heart that comes of knowing that this effort is to be the very last of your
career, says a lot of his toughness.
Alastair Cook followed the script. A fifty in his first innings of the
Test, helping his side to score a marketable total, a big century in his very
last Test innings. And, what is more, it was an innings that revived his side
when it has slipped to 62-2, a lead of 102 and two more quick wickets would
have got India right back into the game. It was fitting that it should be Cook
and Root – the captain and the man he replaced – batting together to put the
game out of India’s reach. Root is learning that poor results and an inability
to covert frequent fifties into match-winning centuries is making him an easy
target, just as Cook discovered that, with England’s fickle fandom, you are
only ever one failure from calls to drop you. Heaven only knows what side
England would have put out over the years if team selection had been down to
the feedbackers on the BBC’s old 606 Message Board, or CricInfo, where “sack
the lot” is regarded as the height of balanced and thoughtful selection policy.
India’s push to consolidate their position was first repulsed, then
turned into retreat and, as the score mounted, finally became a headlong flight,
as Cook and Root batted together of 66.3 overs, adding a mere 259 together. All that time, Cook accumulated and there is no
doubt that his calming presence at the other end helped Joe Root to his first Test
century since Edgbaston 2017: nine times since then Root had reached fifty,
just twice he had reached eighty and not once had he gone further.
Cook’s first fifty took 127 balls and included just 4x4. His second
fifty took 83 balls and, despite his acceleration, also contained 4x4 and his
last 47 runs contained 6x4 and occupied 76 balls, as England accelerated to an
inevitable declaration. With no Inshant Sharma available and just three
front-line bowlers, India were put to the sword. It was not the brutal hitting
of a Stokes or a Pietersen or a Botham, it was calculated, grinding, run-by-run
demolition of the opposition. It was the slow destruction of the will to resist.
The mental disintegration of knowing that you are being toyed with and that you
cannot influence the course of the match one jot, nor can you change the timing
of the declaration. With no one else to turn to, debutant Hanuma Vihari was
thrown the ball. He had bowled just over 230 runs in 41 previous innings in his
First Class career, for the grand total of nineteen wickets: just about one
wicket every two innings that he has bowled in. In ten matches since the end of
March he had just had two, brief spells, yet he was the man that his captain
turned to in the hope of slowing the scoring. His first seven overs of gentle
off-spin, described by one reporter as like “Winnie-the-Pooh after a couple of
gins”, brought just 24 runs, which was probably better than his captain could
ever have hoped for. Even he though, would have been amazed to find himself on
a hat-trick and to have provoked the ovation of the day. Joe Root slogged the
first ball of his eighth over and only succeeded in top-edging to Pandya at
Deep Mid-Wicket. Root gone for 125 and, as the batsmen had crossed, Cook took
the next ball. Cook essayed a cut, the ball went through a little quicker and a
little lower than he expected, and Pant, who has let through an extraordinary
number of byes in this series, including the indignity, in this innings, of
five penalty runs for letting the ball run through his legs onto the helmet
behind him, hung on. Vihani had ended the career of arguably England’s finest
opener since Sir Leonard Hutton [Sir Geoffrey had a better average than
Alastair Cook and I am most definitely a fan of Sir Geoffrey, but even he would
admit that Alastair Cook’s feats in Test cricket take some beating,
particularly given that, of necessity, Sir Geoffrey was all too often Horatius,
holding the bridge to avert defeat, while Alastair Cook’s greatest innings have,
more often than not, set up a win].
Yet another standing ovation. Every single Indian player shook his hand
– how often has a player been so honoured by the opposition? – and on with the
game, the serious stuff now over. Cook’s innings and stand had been
match-defining. It was now just a matter of how many more the rest of the
batsmen biffed, boshed and bashed before Joe Root had mercy and declared. The
lead was 361 when Cook fell, a total chased successfully in the fourth innings just
nine times in the history of Test cricket. The match was safe and Cook had
assured that, barring catastrophe, England would win the Test and, with it, the
series 4-1.
Cook has had this knack of producing career-saving innings, or
career-defining series when he had least right to. In 2010, poor home series
against Bangladesh and Pakistan brought the real threat of losing his place for
the winter tour of Australia. 110 out of 222ao in the 3rd Test
defeat probably saved his career, just 116 runs coming from the other five and
a half Tests that summer. He went to Australia, scored 67 and 235* in the first
Test and, as they say, the rest is history. Likewise, in 2013/14, he averaged
27.7 against Australia in England, 24.6 in the return series in Australia and
then 19.5 against Sri Lanka. His career and his captaincy were under the cosh,
he was in terrible form, the team that he captained was losing, yet he saved
his career with a fighting 95 against India and averaged 50 in that series, 54
in England’s next series (the 2015 tour of the Caribbean), 77 against New
Zealand, 37 in the 2015 Ashes and then 90 against Pakistan in the UAE.
Would he has produced this amazing innings had it not been his last
Test? We will never know, but one has to suspect not. It was to a large degree the
situation: he was relieved of pressure; he knew that he would never have to go
through this again. He could relax and enjoy cricket. And he knows that, if he
fancies a couple of end of season games for Essex now, he can play them. If he
wants a few weeks on the farm with Alice, he can do it and no one will say a
word. His life is, after this Test ends, his own again. The situation allowed
him to recover the serenity that permitted one, last, big score, even if the
petrol gauge was registering empty.
Of course, the same fans who, a week ago were saying that he had lost it
and would not have picked him for Sri Lanka and now asking him if he can change
his mind and make himself available again. It is a crazy idea. He decided,
months back, that the time was right. He has gone out on the highest of highs.
If he were to reverse his decision later, the only way from here is down and,
having laboured so hard to reverse the decline and go on his terms, it would
only endanger his legacy.
Despite that, it does seem likely that he will be touring with England
again this winter, but not as a player: it is already rumoured that he will be
commentating on the tour. What Alice will make of this, having thought that he
would be at home helping with the kids, we do not know, but you can bet that he
will not do it unless he knows that Alice is agrees that it is the right thing
to do. In fact, knowing the relationship between the two, it is more than
possible that it was Alice who suggested to him that this would be the right
career move for him.
Le Roi est Mort. Vive le Roi!
Farewell Chef.
