A Degree in People

I generally like reading Mike Brearley's columns in The Observer. His intellect, experience and knowledge are unquestionable, although he's never particularly impressed me as a prose stylist.

Yesterday's piece, here, was something else.

For a start I liked and agreed with the points he was making about Alastair Cook, a player who's come to be taken for granted remarkably early in his career and who embodies a lot of old-fashioned batting virtues which can be hard to find these days. And then there's the style, which carries echoes of my favourite old-school cricket writer, the late Alan Ross.