Is It Really Alastair The Great?

Something to think about - a great?

Alastair Cook, that rarity among England opening batsmen in the second half of the history of the game, will retire after the dead rubber 5th Test against India at the Oval. He has been a fine player and a former captain and his stats are, in the main, imposing.

Rarity? Well, he has been one of the few English openers to last into a third season in the role.

There will be general acceptance that he is a "great" of the English game. Many will bay that he is the greatest English opener of all time, based no doubt on being the most capped of Englishman or being her highest run scorer or perhaps his five double hundreds or thumping the Aussies on their own turf, as a batsman, at least.

But "great"? Really?

Caps are a modern phenomenon. More Test cricket is played in the post 1990's era than ever before so you just have to hang around to be near the top of that list. Twelve years at the top of England's order has never been more achievable than in the past thirty years. Being a fair bat helped. Being touted as an air apparent to the captaincy, then being the captain and finally being a successful ex-captain, all helped smooth over any suggestions of removal for poor form. That was for the opener at the other end, leaning on his bat near the revolving door.

The greatest English opener ever? The first picked? To be honest, there others better qualified and better credentialed for that title. Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Hutton would be three you would argue over for two positions in a battle in which I'm not even sure Cook would even finish fourth. Certainly not if Boycott was counting the ballots. Cook's mid forties average against numbers at least ten in advance of him, is enough assurance of that argument, let alone the memory of how those men played. Hobbs scored more first class hundreds after his 40th birthday than before and Cook is retiring at 33.

Batting average is a fair indicator of quality but not the only one. In Cook's case, his batting average peaked in his first Test in March 2006 and stayed in the fifties for only nine Test matches, dropping below the magic mark in November of that same year and returning there only briefly in 2012. For the remainder of his career, it wandered up and down the forties, marking him as no more than a fine player, not a great.

Of course, for a time there, Cook was the man opposition captains most wanted to get out and there in lies the better indicator of whether a batsman is a great. When an innings begins at any level, there are one or two batsmen you know are likely to hurt you.

Cousin Gail?

Imagine it this way. After lunch on Christmas day when the first rello bats, you already know who the big wickets will be. It won't be your cousin Gail, for despite her expertise at vigoro and being a few years older, she only has the hoick to square leg or a push to cover. Some Christmases she can take you apart but not often. Her younger brother Garry has the Joe the Cameraman seal of approval. Your dad cuts like he's chopping wood and always plays on and your little brother ... well sometimes less is just less. No, its Uncles Allan and Brian you want to see off. Allan because he can bat all afternoon unless you run him out out when he reaches for a beer and Brian because he has reflexes like a cat, never hits the ball in the air and makes you feel like a beginner as you bring your arm over. He can hurt you.

Alastair Cook is your cousin Gail.

In a ten innings Test series, those batsmen you really want to get out will hurt you five or six times. Batsmen who do this more often and for a large part of their career, are the ones we can call greats. They are usually the ones who average over fifty and play the innings that wins a match and often changes a series. Cook has done that but it was a while ago and he didn't do it for more than three or four years of his twelve year career ... and he didn't do it year after year after year.

Bowled by Mitch Johnson
at Adelaide December 2013

Cook hasn’t had a career marked by massive, exuberant celebration about him after his wicket fell and for the last few years, it was a surprise when he lasted to fifty. Had it not been for two deserted island double centuries in the past two years - against the West Indies and Australia - this rose of English cricket would look more wilted than it already does.

He has stayed too long. Going out at the top of your game is hard to pull off. Most manage to leave just past their apex - Warne, McGrath and Ponting for instance - and very few leave when they are still a clear and present danger to the opposition. Greg Chappell comes to mind. Cook has been hiding his use by date only from himself.

Much is also made of his captaincy record as he is one of the most successful English captains in terms of Test victories but given the immense talent he had at his disposal and that he inherited a team built first by Michael Vaughan and then Andrew Strauss, perhaps that's not a personal achievement he can rightly claim. His captaincy was the Old Mother Hubbard variety, with a cupboard bare of tactics, usually necessary when the talent is waning in the last session and the batsmen are devouring bowlers like a rabid Pacman. Instead, he sought to impose himself on his players and grind away at the opposition, in the manner he had learned at The Bedford School. There were no tricks, just good old British bulldog stuff. Can anyone remember rabbits he pulled from that three lions cap which changed the course of a game? If so, thecricketragics is open to correspondence.

Managing KP was beyond him.

He also presided over the collapse of that same strong English side - one of the strongest and most successful English sides of the modern era - mostly because of his inflexible man management techniques. He was no thinker about behaviour like Brearley, who perhaps proved his mettle in being the only man to harness Ian Botham by the simple act of setting him free. Cook tried to manacle the likes of Pietersen and Swann and Anderson and had no consolation and support skills to bring Trott back from the abyss and as a result, his team imploded on a disastrous 2013-14 tour of Australia.

On the field, his tactics were wooden and only worked when his bowlers rose above their station. If they were being collared, he only had more of the same "come on chaps" style of leadership. His leadership lacked imagination and although he developed into a fine slipper, neither it nor his batting was enough inspiration.

Don't get me wrong. 12,000 Test runs, 32 hundreds with 5 doubles, 173 catches, 24 Test victories as skipper, these are all good stats. For the record, only six of those twenty four victories were against Australia, in 15 matches, but he did beat India and South Africa on their own soil. Hens have teeth on the occasions Australia has won in India and it was his first series as skipper after the unexpected retirement of Strauss.

Won them, lost them, won them again.

So we are left with the distinction between this writer being content to describe Alastair Cook as a fine Test cricketer, a great ambassador for his country and the game and apparently a very pleasant bloke when not captaining his team. However, while others throw about sports most abused adjective and in doing so, cheapen the establish claims of those who gone before to the mantle and stayed there, I must object.

Harking back to the batsmen you most want to remove and without even considering anyone before 1990, give it this Test. You're the opposition skipper. Cook is batting at one end. Ponting is at the other. Which one will put Merv Hughes tongue in your ear if they are out first? In that company, he's the great and the other is just a fine player.