Captain Cook Plows Through Rough Seas

Cook made his 23rd Test hundred

Alastair Cook became England's captain when the seas were rough and the way forward uncertain. England had lost their way after being world leaders in the game they invented but all of their former colonies seemed to be better at. There were fractions of factions with too much voice and not enough self control within is ranks and the course he had to navigate was through waters controlled by a nation foreign to Englishmen now that its wealth and power was removed from their control.

In Kolkata, he anchored off shore for three days before storming in and removing all opposition on the fourth.

He is a remarkable young man. At 27, he so perfectly fits that description of his youth that during his 190, he became the youngest player in cricket history to 7000 Test runs - younger than Lara, younger than Tendulkar. He joins Ken Barrington as the only Englishmen to score three centuries in a series in India and in the process, went past a stateroom of the greatest quality to become the most prolific century maker for The Old Country ...

... and he's only 27.

Despite these staggering achievements, he has bailed out a sinking English ship. His team was flogged in Ahmedabad, despite his fighting second innings century and yet they have come charging back with wins in Mumbai and seemingly Kolatta on the weight of his runs and that of the reformed Kevin Pietersen and the spin of Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann.

Pietersen had seemed unlikely to tour - in fact was not chosen - following a suspension from the England Test team imposed as punishment for his disloyalty to Andrew Strauss. A petulant man, Pietersen finds forgiveness a bridge too far and couldn't let go of the loss of face that his removal from the captaincy caused. He became a bilge rat when things turned sour for England and South Africa bested them on home turf. He was hard done by from his own accounts but not by any other reckoning. Having suspended himself from all other forms of the England game, he eventually entertained the chance of a game in India under a new man.

Don't under estimate Cook's hand in that reversal of "form".

Andrew Strauss' great conjuring trick as England captain was to create a rallying point for the disparate personalities that occupy spots in the English Test side. He was a puppet master and did what so many other English captains have refused to do - allowing his men to be true unto themselves but managing to coerce their egos into sharing the same space and time for a collective gain. Cook, playing quietly for hours at the other end or crouching at short leg, was a keen student and appears to have learned how to pull those strings.

His over powering skill though, is to score mountains of runs by staying out there for session after session, a brick wall against any bowling, who slashes you past point or caresses you past mid on often enough. When he has you humbled, he'll start driving you with imperious timing through the covers, allowing himself that coy, boyish smile when satisfied.

Would you believe its only a little over two years ago - August 2010 - that a second innings hundred against Pakistan at The Oval saved his Test career? Until then, he had been a reasonable Test player but was too often out slashing outside his off stump in that way that ill tempered left handers do. That day under the gasometer, he ensured his own reprieve and a tour to Australia. It was a tour which not only changed his life but completely restructure cricket here. That other Cook was 41 when he came to Australia and changed the place.

Since The Oval, he has ten hundreds, six of them over 150 and two of them doubles and has scored 2748 runs @ 70 in 39 completed innings. One hundred every four innings compares nicely with anyone, even the statistical freak that was Bradman.

More importantly, as a leader, he is about to pull of the dream start. Down and out in Ahmedabad, he defied India for a long time in that second innings hundred and his run making since has set up two successive wins. If England can do no worse than a draw in Nagpur, it will be the first English series win in India since a month before he took his first breath. Today he should become only the second English captain to win successive Tests in India, Tony Greig being the first in the mid 1970's.

It seems he's trimmed his leaky ship and has it moving under full sail across the Bay of Bengal ...

... as I said, he's only 27 ... born on Christmas Day ... I wonder if his old man was a carpenter?