When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

When the moment comes, and the gathering stands
And the clock turns back to reflect
On those years of grace, as the footsteps trace
For the last time out of the act
Well this way of life’s recollection
The hallowed strip in the haze
The fabled men in the noonday sun
Are much more than just yarns of their days

Roy Harper, When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

When John Murray - a man who was simply ‘JT’ to a generation - died in late July, Mike Selvey, who is old enough to have played with him and knew him to the very end of his life, posted a link on Twitter to a video of Roy Harper’s agelessly evocative song When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease. It represented Selvey’s sadness at the loss of a colleague, hero, friend and mentor.

In the maelstrom of recollection and emotion that filled the space between the announcement of Alastair Cook’s retirement and the end of his final Test match, thoughts of the song seeped inexorably into my mind.

In Cook’s case the song seems both fitting and also ludicrously inappropriate. While he has left the Test crease for good, he is very far from anybody’s notion of an old cricketer. If anyone normal had played in as many games, seen off as many opening bursts with the lacquered, hard, new ball denting bat, flesh and bone, or spent hours on the field in weather hot enough to kill, or captained his country through the physical and psychological torment of crushing defeat to their bitterest rivals, they would be wizened and bent double like a cricketing Quasimodo. Not Cook, though. None of these experiences seems to have aged him at all.

Although Alastair Cook hopefully has many decades of life ahead of him, his retirement can be viewed as a kind of death. The death of a certain style of batsmanship, perhaps; or, alternatively, the death of an era.

Few people are going to get too misty eyed over the loss of Cook’s collection of staccato half-strokes, even if I will always contend that he wasn’t as ugly a player as many thought, at least on those occasions when - such as those two days in Melbourne, when, perhaps just starting to feel his career slipping away - he trusted himself to really drive the ball through the offside, rather than merely helping it into the gaps with the air of grim suspicion which years of opening the batting had induced.

However, in some ways, the fact that so many found Cook's style jarring was a welcome counterpoint to all the other aspects of him that could seem too good to be true: The matchless fitness, the failure to sweat, the seeming inability to ever sustain an injury, the apparent imperviousness to stress, the way in which his Test career concluded. True heroes can never be too perfect.

Great sportsmen make the difficult look easy, but Cook frequently did the opposite. If that alone means that for all his unique longevity he isn’t quite up with England’s very greatest players in aesthetic, rather than the purely numerical terms in which he is king, his significance goes far beyond the legacy of a thousand bent-kneed nudges through the leg-side.

It’s purely a coincidence that I began writing about cricket on the Web during the months following Cook’s Test debut. Loads of people were doing the same then. Many have fallen by the wayside, some have gone on to bigger things, others, like me, are still around in the shadows, occasionally stirred to write something by an event which particularly resonates with them. For each and every one of us, love him or loathe him (and, in case anyone doesn’t know, there are people who really loathe him), Cook has always been there.

That was a different time. The Ashes had just come home, and English Test cricket on terrestrial television was a fresh memory, not a distant dream. For many of the summers that followed - and the occasional extraordinary winter - Cook stood at the fulcrum of an England team which was as good as any in the world.

It will soon be Cook’s fate to rejoin the likes of Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott on the county circuit, as well as his other compatriots - Strauss, and KP, and Matt Prior, and Monty, and Swanny, doing whatever it is they’re doing in the half-life of near memory.

Even Cook’s greatest innings rarely quickened the pulse. They were efforts of will, of concentration, of understated poise. Monuments to the triumph of the mind. But perhaps an even greater impression was left by his courage, his dignity under pressure, his innate modesty and his decency.

In England, autumn is setting in now. Anyone who knows the country - as Cook, settling into life as a former Test cricketer by striding across farmland somewhere in southern England, assuredly does - recognizes what this feels like. Cooler mornings, fresh breezes, early sunsets. A time of change, a time for reflection, and a time for memories of what has been lost.

One memory of Cook: It is Melbourne; it is two days after Christmas, 2017. Cook, not for the first time, has seemingly rescued his ailing career from the brink of terminal decline. At the day's end he is 104 not out. Although, as usual, he is reluctant to talk about himself and what he does, he agrees to answer questions from some of BT Sport's shifting cast of characters. He says a few things about what he's done, about settling in when you're wondering if you can still bat, about the hesitant embrace of some semblance of form, about the drives starting to flow, about reaching his hundred in the day's final over, bowled by Australia's captain.

These are the themes. I can't remember everything he said - with Cook you rarely could - but something I strongly recall is Cook saying, clearly, without artifice, that 'it sounds like I'm making myself out to be a good player'.

You were, Alastair. You really, really were.

The Dying of the Light

Australia is where English cricketers' dreams go to die. Joe Root knows this all too well.

Joe Root, rising 27, with his wispy would-be beard, and that hardening of eyes and features which stress produces, is at one of life's cusps. Until recently he always looked young and carefree, apart from when he was out. In the aftermath of Perth, in the harsh, unforgiving forcefield of the cameras and the microphones and the pundits' egos, he started to look, for the very first time, just a little bit old. Like many another man before him, he is starting to experience the uneasy feeling of his life changing as it turns on the wheel of the England captaincy and the difficulty of playing Test cricket in Australia. He has played in seven Test matches in Australia and he has been on the losing side seven times.

With a few exceptions, Australia - big old Australia with its huge grounds, its vivid light and scalding sun, its flies, its harsh, sarcastic crowds, its batsmen and its fast bowlers - has always been a difficult place for English teams to triumph. Go there with a Larwood, or a Tyson, or a John Snow, together with a crystal clear tactical plan, and you have a chance. Catch Australia at a point where they are rebuilding and you have a strong side touched by genius, and you have more than a chance. Other times, like now, forget it.

In some senses what has happened recently is neither as shocking nor as debilitating as the pitiless defeats of 2006 or 2013. The absence of Ben Stokes tempered expectations, and there are other things to cling on to; Craig Overton's spirit, Dawid Malan's burgeoning confidence, James Vince's cover drive. With this said, though, there is the inescapable feeling that old certainties are ebbing away. Jimmy Anderson is there, 35 and still running in with his customary liquid rhythm. He is barely tainted by age, but time is not his friend, while for Stuart Broad and Alastair Cook things are worse. They are younger but they have fallen further and more quickly, leaving them wide open to the old sporting cliche: how much do you want it? When you have been there and done it so often, how readily can you muster the energy to rage against the dying of the light? You can deny that there is a problem - that much is easy - but what are you going to do about the fact that you can't take wickets or score runs?

As the sun rises so the light dies, and for Joe Root, and for England, there is a wider sense that the skies are darkening; that before long they may be looking for two opening batsmen instead of one; they may be looking for someone with the potential to take wickets with the old and new balls, and make aggressive lower-order runs; they, if they are Root himself, will be looking for a way to turn fifties into big hundreds in the manner that is second nature to Smith or Kohli. And all this in an environment of marginalisation and complacency; where those taking game-shaping decisions are more interested in promoting a putative competition which there is little evidence many people want, while relegating to the season's margins the type of cricket which could produce another Stuart Broad or Alastair Cook. And where the expectation is always that there will be an early season greentop on which England will win the toss and Anderson will go through a shivering group of Sri Lankans like a hot knife through the butter in the Lord's dining room and all will be right with the world. England keep making 400 and losing matches by an innings, but that happens in countries abroad about which we know little and care less, apart from when the Perth seagulls or the Chennai vultures are circling.

Who needs Josh Hazlewood or Ravi Ashwin when you can bowl a side out for nothing in unfamiliar conditions and think you're a good team?

In truth the embrace of marginalisation for money began years ago, when, after the greatest home Test series anyone had seen, English cricket hid itself behind a paywall. Stuart Broad was just starting out on a professional career, Alastair Cook was on the verge of international cricket, and Joe Root was 14 and already good. To him, then, little mattered beyond playing the game, and he had all the answers.

Now, as 2017 closes in Melbourne, he and his side face only questions. Finding the answers to them will take a lot longer than five days, and many more dreams will die before they do so.

Coming Home (2nd February 2014)

This piece was the product of thinking about what Alastair Cook must have felt like, both during England's doomed 2013-14 tour of Australia, and after returning home. You can never really know, of course, but you can make a judgement based on what you've seen and how you think you would feel.

You would feel grim, and it would take you a long time to recover from the experience. It was that kind of tour.

It is still early in the year in southern England. For those of us who have been here all winter it does not seem cold. But still the rain lashes down. Everything looks dirty. The entire country feels as though it is drowning.

Alastair Cook notices this. He feels the chill and does his England blazer up. Alice, his wife, has brought him a heavy overcoat from home; he puts it on and turns the collar up. As the beads of water drip down the car window, the realisation sets in that he is home. For months, those killing, unforgettable months he has spent on the other side of the world at the focus of what is perhaps the most savage and pitiful defeat English cricket has ever known, the weather has made little impression on his consciousness. It has been hot, of course it has been so hot, but he has been there before and he is famous for never breaking sweat. The only thing disorientating or unusual has been the intensity and clarity of the sunshine, and the burning dryness of the air. All this is gone, now.

As the car leaves Heathrow Airport behind, images of defeat cluster his mind. It is a chilling montage of lost tosses, dropped catches, poorly executed strokes and the harsh, unforgiving glare of the camera eye. Unwanted post-defeat interviews in soiled kit, with thousands of Australians leering and jeering and laughing. Mark Nicholas, a preening martinet in a tailored suit, firing the questions with a forced mixture of levity and accusation. Why? Why? Why? Airless press conferences with all the Aussies there, Conn and his mates, with their crude and tedious jibes, laughing behind their notepads as they mock the fact that England's only truly successful player was born in New Zealand.

Nothing has prepared him for this. Not the gilded childhood, singing in the St.Paul's choir, nor those adolescent summers piling up runs on the school ground at Bedford as public schoolboys in museum piece caps bend to his will. Not the previous winter's glory in India, defying tiredness, searing heat and the weight of the past. There have been times these past few years when it has seemed as though Cook may be superhuman. We now know that he is not.

He was almost dropped by England once. But then came the Oval century against Pakistan, and the rest is history. 100 consecutive Tests and counting. Today, with jet lag setting in and defeat on his mind, he feels every one of those games in his legs and in his mind. The comforts of home cannot come soon enough.

The key turns in the lock. The house is warm. The bags are left in the hallway. Now, at last, a time to shed the layers of formal clothing crumpled by hours of international travel. A time to reflect on what has happened to him, and to the team which he has captained.

As the days turn into nights and back to days again, with Cook barely recognizing their passing, the recollections have an unwelcome tendency to come thick and fast, a bit like the Australian attack on one of its many good days. Cook relishes the opportunity to get away from everything - from holding a bat, from thinking constantly about bowling changes and field placings, from people, with microphones, or with beers in their hands, asking him 'why? - and he enjoys the serenity and security of being in his own space. He watches television, he reads a little, he talks to Alice, he sorts through the mountain of tedious paperwork which has arrived while he has been away. He spends some time outside, with the farm animals which have failed to register his departure, his absence or his return. This is how he likes it. He has been noticed far too much over recent months, usually for the wrong reasons.

But, as the activity lulls, the memories and anxieties return. In an instant he is back at the Adelaide Oval, late in the day, his mind and body scrambled by the relentless heat and noise, by the batting of Clarke and Haddin and Harris, and by his team's threadbare bowling. He is facing Mitchell Johnson, who is bowling to him as quickly as anyone has ever done. He sees the ball, but in an instant it is through him as his reactions, slowed by tiredness and stress, fail to cope. He hears his wicket break, and then, a heartbeat later, he hears the roar of the Australian crowd. In a sense this is flattering, as it signifies how highly his wicket is prized, but he knows that. He has no need for flattery. He needs runs.

Another time he is back in Perth. The heat has not receded and his team, theoretically, are chasing 504 to win. This time it is the hulking frame of Ryan Harris which confronts him. He sees the ball better this time as it doesn't quite have the pace of Johnson's delivery, but it swings in slightly through the air before cutting away off the pitch and hitting the top of his off stump. He knows he couldn't have done anything more to counter it - few left-handed batsmen alive could have done - but it cuts to the quick even more as it is the first ball of the innings and he knows that in all probability the Ashes are about to be surrendered.

These are extracts; he also recalls dropped catches, poor strokes, captaincy decisions. While his confidence - the sort of confidence which derives from a life of almost unbroken success - has been affected, when it comes to his batting failures he knows very well that he can bat. He always could, and the numbers are in the book. Form is temporary, class is permanent, all that. But captaincy is different. He hasn't done very much of it, and it shows, both on the field and off. He knows that what he has said about wanting to continue in the job, at least in Test cricket, is genuine and heartfelt. He wants the chance to show that he is capable of improvement. He wants the chance to help bring his England side back from its darkest hour. He feels, with Andy Flower, a man he likes and admires, still in charge, that better times lie ahead. Come the early summer in England, the pitches will be green, Jimmy and Broady will be fresh, perhaps Finny will be back, Stokes will be there. He knows how Sri Lankan and Indian batsmen play the seaming and swinging ball in English conditions. In his mind, for all its concerns, there is hope for the future.

A few days in, Cook is lazing around the house when the doorbell rings. Alice is nearer so she goes to the door. There is a brief, and, to Cook, inaudible, exchange of pleasantries. Then she calls to her husband:

“Alastair, Andy Flower is here to see you”.

A Kind of Greatness

I started writing this blog in the summer of 2006, just a few months after Alastair Cook made his Test debut.

I've missed a few Tests since then. He hasn't missed any.

Amid all the plaudits, and the veiled and often not-so-veiled criticisms, heaped on Cook after his epic this week, that's something worth remembering. The last Test match played by England in which he didn't participate took place in Mumbai in March 2006. It's remembered for different reasons (the mind's eye turns readily to the desperate sight of Monty Panesar circling under the Dhoni steeplers), but, since then, whenever and wherever England have played a Test match, Cook has been there. Usually batting.

I've grappled before with the thorny question of where Cook stands in the wider lexicon of English batsmanship, and, for someone who's scored so many runs, and so many centuries, assessing him is more difficult and entails more ambivalence than it should.

You can start by doing this. Think of any English batsman. Cook has scored more runs and more centuries than anyone you can think of. Not necessarily at a better average, and sometimes against bowling attacks which don't measure up to those faced by many players of the past, but the runs still have to be scored. Cook has done this in every country and in every type of pitch, match and climatic environment.

His cardinal virtues are so widely known that they hardly need further enumeration. He has unnatural levels of patience, resilience, physical fitness and self-discipline. He never gets injured, he barely sweats, he never appears to age. These are the things which set him apart in ways that the fundamentals of his batting don't.

With the exception of yesterday, he always goes in early. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He drives, rarely trusting himself to push the bat all the way through the line, but covering any movement, playing impeccably straight, and with beautiful natural timing. If the bowler is then prompted to drop short he will cut, and he will pull. Then he will leave and defend some more, lumbering regular singles with a gait which can seem in keeping with his alternative existence as a farmhand. In time, the bowlers tire and the runs pile up. At the other end, batsmen, usually his shifting and uncertain cast of opening partners, come and go. It is never sexy, it is in many ways old-fashioned, but, in its own way, it is brilliant and uplifting.

Away from the crease he gives the impression of being a reserved and conventional man. The most interesting and unusual thing about him is his batting. In the age of Twenty20, where speed of scoring and six-hitting is all, his approach is different and distinctive.

Wherever you look there are players who can clear the ropes at will. Could they bat for 14 hours in one innings? Could they heck.

Of course Cook can be criticized. Anyone can, especially with the benefit of a litany of grievances which paint him as one of the bad guys in a saga that is nuanced beyond the understanding of anyone who wasn't intimately involved, and with the benefit of Twenty20 hindsight.

Too much time can be wasted trying to assess the relative merits of players with different backgrounds, different approaches, different gifts. Cook may not quite be the type of player conventionally held to be 'great', and he is certainly no genius, but what he does is so far from easy that it bestows on him a kind of greatness. Nobody else, certainly among contemporary English players can do what he does. New players come into the England side to partner Cook every few matches, and none of them can do it. You can be sure that they would like to, but they cannot. In most cases they probably can't even imagine themselves doing it.

Batting at any level of the game is a hard business. A batsman is only ever one good ball or one poor shot away from failure. This uncertainty affects bodies and minds. Try going through ten years of that at the very highest level of the game, some of which you have spent failing, and you will be a mess. To be sane, and to be capable of doing what Cook has just done, perhaps you need, as I've said before about Cook, to be doing what you were put on earth to do.

This is someone who was born to bat.

Antidote to Madness

When people make definitive statements about places, or about books, or about people, there is always room for doubt, for contrary opinion.

Some you take, others you leave. Some you agree with, others you dismiss.

When people, as people often do, say that Lord's is 'the greatest cricket ground in the world', I tend to agree (Although that other familiar cliché 'the Home of Cricket' I'm less sure about. The Home of Cricket these days surely lies, literally or metaphorically, somewhere in India.).

I've been going to Lord's since the summer when Sunny Gavaskar batted through sixty overs for 36 not out. Today the ground, and the game, and the Indian cricket psyche, are very different. But they still fascinate and compel.

Friday 18th July 2014 is the hottest day of the British year. The mercury is in the low thirties - Lord's is a Fahrenheit sort of place, you feel, but these twenty-first century days Celsius is king - and, in the early afternoon, with the sky a deep and bottomless shade of blue, the fading vapour trails left by soaring aircraft traverse the sky. They, and the outside world they represent, seem abstract and separate, as they always do when cricket, even slow Test cricket, captures the attention.

The game is an antidote to the madness of the world.

Late the previous afternoon the news comes via Twitter that a civil airliner has been blown out of the sky over the Ukraine, probably by a ground-to-air missile. Then there is Gaza, where defenceless people are killed on a daily basis. Syria, where much the same thing has been happening for more than three years, has been temporarily relegated from the front pages, but it will, as surely as night follows day, return. These are examples of the lunatic chaos of a world in which millions of people have more important things on their mind - simple survival will do - than the outcome of a bat and ball game.

At Lord's, though, things are different, especially in the old Victorian pavilion and the adjacent Warner Stand. The talk is of the lives of sons, of daughters, of former pupils, of the price of London property, which, it seems, is rising faster than the shade temperature. In certain conversations there are deaths and serious, painful injuries, but these are the result of leisure time accidents, suffered while hiking, or skiing, or playing rugby; not of unavoidable exposure to terrorism or war.

During the hour before lunch in the Warner Stand the incessant chatter is punctuated by the sound of corks being forcibly expelled from champagne bottles. Such is their velocity, many of these end up on the beautifully manicured turf, which can often look more like a carpet than something composed of living, growing, grass. And, on a Sunday, when the pavilion fills with a younger class of member, with their pristine yellow passes and their sharp dress sense, the prevailing sensation for the older member is that of a friendless outsider at a public school reunion.

Lord's, with its hotchpotch of ancient and modern buildings, is a very different place from virtually any other cricket ground in the world. And, despite the heat, for the Indian players, brought up on the parched dustbowls of Uttar Pradesh or the cramped suburban fields of Greater Mumbai, that difference must seem especially pronounced.

But it is also welcome and inspirational. At different points in a match which remains even and compellingly contested until lunch on the last day, we are treated to the beautiful yet combative neatness of the Mumbaikar Ajinkya Rahane, and the versatility of Uttar Pradesh's Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a man who knows he can bowl but is finding out at international level that he also has an unsuspected gift for batting. Ishant Sharma, a man who has always looked to have the potential to take on the world but has rarely hinted at consistency, supplies the coup de grâce.

On the English side there are only poignancies and uncertainties and regrets. As the match hurtles to its conclusion on Monday afternoon, Matt Prior and Joe Root are both dismissed pulling the ball to deep fielders placed specifically for such errant shots. It is a kind of collective madness, based on the confidence deficit which repeated failure to win brings, and the uncertainty of the confused mind, brought low by injury and defeat.

As he leaves the field and walks slowly through the Long Room, Prior holds his head high. Although he surely knows, as we do, that not only has he played a poor shot but that it may be the last thing he ever does in an England shirt, he shows little remorse. He is the old warrior leaving the stage. Root, by contrast, can barely drag himself off the field, such is his obvious regret. For all his runs, Root is still a young pro who has yet to learn to guard his emotions. He wears his heart on his sleeve.

A short while later, with the game over and Alastair Cook, a drowning man clinging desperately to a sinking ship, answering Michael Atherton's questions with the same bland assurances we have heard so often before, the eye turns to Paul Downton, standing on his own, close to the pavilion gate. He looks around him with unfeigned seriousness, but you sense that he isn't seeing or hearing much.

He is wondering what on earth he has got himself into.

A Very English Batsman

Despite his Australian upbringing (and the fact that he was crassly written off as a 'poor man's Nick Compton' by Bob Willis after his first Test appearance), Sam Robson cuts a figure which seems far from out of place at the top of the English order, with the result that he already radiates a curious sense of belonging.

With his pale, pinched features, his diffident seriousness, his hunched, mildly idiosyncratic, ball-sniffing method, and his steadiness of tempo, Robson seems a world away from the popular notion - fed with relish these past couple of years by another Sydneysider - of the gum-chewing, Baggy Green wearing, top-order slasher, bristling with confrontational aggression. If you want to fall back on Aussie stereotypes from a dimmer past, years before Robson was even a glimmer in his now well-recognized father's eye, he's a good deal more Bill Lawry than Keith Stackpole, let alone David Warner. He bats as if he was brought up on the capricious surfaces of his adopted county, with their boundary roads and their exhaust infused atmospheres, rather than the true surfaces of the Australian world city where he grew up.

In this he fits. English cricket has always subsisted on an underlying conservatism of method, a mistrust of the unusual, a reluctance to embrace and celebrate genius. With Pietersen - a foreign-born and raised player whose contradictory nature and self-celebrated brilliance always ran counter to this - cast to the winds, there is a sense that, even though three of its newest recruits were born abroad, that the English side is retreating towards that which it knows best and feels most comfortable with. This may not, of course, be an entirely good thing.

Although sterner tests await, Gary Ballance has looked well-organised and temperamentally sound at three, replicating much of Jonathan Trott's calmness and resilience without his obsessive ritualism and sense of restrained, scowling anxiety, while Moeen Ali has exuded languid class at six, although each of his dismissals so far has raised questions. Chris Jordan has the air of a gifted and versatile operator, if one who still doesn't quite grasp the limitations of his technique or the limits of his potential. Joe Root, back in the side after a year of being messed around, accumulates with the unpretentiousness assurance of one who, for all his lack of distinctive elegance, knows that he can perform at the highest level and isn't afraid of being seen to enjoy the experience.

And then there is Robson's more experienced opening partner. With Cook we have been this way before, and, in the end, he always comes good. And, on account of his much-derided captaincy, the end for him will be further away than for many others, which, in its turn, reinforces the impression of a team which is rebuilding by retreating to the mode which it knows best, new players from around the globe or not.

This grates a little. England may be more stable sans KP and ultimately - although one's hunch is that it will be a long time - they may become as successful as they were with him. But it will also be a long time before they will excite in the same way.

For all that Robson appears to fit his role like a glove, he will never set many pulses racing. For that we may have to wait in hope for a player who was born in the county which Robson has adopted.

But Alex Hales still isn't deemed good enough for England's fifty over side, which, if you stop to think about it, says quite a lot.

Coming Home

It is still early in the year in southern England. For those of us who have been here all winter it does not seem cold. But still the rain lashes down. Everything looks dirty. The entire country feels as though it is drowning.

Alastair Cook notices this. He feels the chill and does his England blazer up. Alice, his wife, has brought him a heavy overcoat from home; he puts it on and turns the collar up. As the beads of water drip down the car window, the realisation sets in that he is home. For months, those killing, unforgettable months he has spent on the other side of the world at the focus of what is perhaps the most savage and pitiful defeat English cricket has ever known, the weather has made little impression on his consciousness. It has been hot, of course it has been so hot, but he has been there before and he is famous for never breaking sweat. The only thing disorientating or unusual has been the intensity and clarity of the sunshine, and the burning dryness of the air. All this is gone, now.

As the car leaves Heathrow Airport behind, images of defeat cluster his mind. It is a chilling montage of lost tosses, dropped catches, poorly executed strokes and the harsh, unforgiving glare of the camera eye. Unwanted post-defeat interviews in soiled kit, with thousands of Australians leering and jeering and laughing. Mark Nicholas, a preening martinet in a tailored suit, firing the questions with a forced mixture of levity and accusation. Why? Why? Why? Airless press conferences with all the Aussies there, Conn and his mates, with their crude and tedious jibes, laughing behind their notepads as they mock the fact that England's only truly successful player was born in New Zealand.

Nothing has prepared him for this. Not the gilded childhood, singing in the St.Paul's choir, nor those adolescent summers piling up runs on the school ground at Bedford as public schoolboys in museum piece caps bend to his will. Not the previous winter's glory in India, defying tiredness, searing heat and the weight of the past. There have been times these past few years when it has seemed as though Cook may be superhuman. We now know that he is not.

He was almost dropped by England once. But then came the Oval century against Pakistan, and the rest is history. 100 consecutive Tests and counting. Today, with jet lag setting in and defeat on his mind, he feels every one of those games in his legs and in his mind. The comforts of home cannot come soon enough.

The key turns in the lock. The house is warm. The bags are left in the hallway. Now, at last, a time to shed the layers of formal clothing crumpled by hours of international travel. A time to reflect on what has happened to him, and to the team which he has captained.

As the days turn into nights and back to days again, with Cook barely recognizing their passing, the recollections have an unwelcome tendency to come thick and fast, a bit like the Australian attack on one of its many good days. Cook relishes the opportunity to get away from everything - from holding a bat, from thinking constantly about bowling changes and field placings, from people, with microphones, or with beers in their hands, asking him 'why? - and he enjoys the serenity and security of being in his own space. He watches television, he reads a little, he talks to Alice, he sorts through the mountain of tedious paperwork which has arrived while he has been away. He spends some time outside, with the farm animals which have failed to register his departure, his absence or his return. This is how he likes it. He has been noticed far too much over recent months, usually for the wrong reasons.

But, as the activity lulls, the memories and anxieties return. In an instant he is back at the Adelaide Oval, late in the day, his mind and body scrambled by the relentless heat and noise, by the batting of Clarke and Haddin and Harris, and by his team's threadbare bowling. He is facing Mitchell Johnson, who is bowling to him as quickly as anyone has ever done. He sees the ball, but in an instant it is through him as his reactions, slowed by tiredness and stress, fail to cope. He hears his wicket break, and then, a heartbeat later, he hears the roar of the Australian crowd. In a sense this is flattering, as it signifies how highly his wicket is prized, but he knows that. He has no need for flattery. He needs runs.

Another time he is back in Perth. The heat has not receded and his team, theoretically, are chasing 504 to win. This time it is the hulking frame of Ryan Harris which confronts him. He sees the ball better this time as it doesn't quite have the pace of Johnson's delivery, but it swings in slightly through the air before cutting away off the pitch and hitting the top of his off stump. He knows he couldn't have done anything more to counter it - few left-handed batsmen alive could have done - but it cuts to the quick even more as it is the first ball of the innings and he knows that in all probability the Ashes are about to be surrendered.

These are extracts; he also recalls dropped catches, poor strokes, captaincy decisions. While his confidence - the sort of confidence which derives from a life of almost unbroken success - has been affected, when it comes to his batting failures he knows very well that he can bat. He always could, and the numbers are in the book. Form is temporary, class is permanent, all that. But captaincy is different. He hasn't done very much of it, and it shows, both on the field and off. He knows that what he has said about wanting to continue in the job, at least in Test cricket, is genuine and heartfelt. He wants the chance to show that he is capable of improvement. He wants the chance to help bring his England side back from its darkest hour. He feels, with Andy Flower, a man he likes and admires, still in charge, that better times lie ahead. Come the early summer in England, the pitches will be green, Jimmy and Broady will be fresh, perhaps Finny will be back, Stokes will be there. He knows how Sri Lankan and Indian batsmen play the seaming and swinging ball in English conditions. In his mind, for all its concerns, there is hope for the future.

A few days in, Cook is lazing around the house when the doorbell rings. Alice is nearer so she goes to the door. There is a brief, and, to Cook, inaudible, exchange of pleasantries. Then she calls to her husband:

“Alastair, Andy Flower is here to see you”.

Blackie

As I've touched on before here, one of the drawbacks of having a life to lead away from writing about cricket - a life with its bereavements, and funerals, and work demands which, sadly, don't involve writing about cricket - is that those people for whom writing about cricket is work tend to find the time to write about people, and issues, well before you do. They also do the job better, by and large, but so it goes. An example of this is Andy Bull's excellent piece about Ian Blackwell, which couldn't do anything other than touch a chord with me.

As time passes, even if, as he hopes, he's seen around the counties in an umpire's coat, people outside the broad acres of Somerset will mostly forget about Ian Blackwell. In many cases, I'm sure, they already have. Ian Blackwell? That porky bloke who hung around the England one-day side for a while, clubbed a few boundaries here and there but mostly got out quickly, bowled a few overs occasionally notable for parsimony but rarely for penetration, and lumbered about in the field.

Oh, him.

But for people such as myself, who watched him play for Somerset at Taunton in his glory years, the memories will be much less marginal. For to be at Taunton - perhaps in the front seats of the Ian Botham Stand, which catch the sun from early morning, in those largely forgotten days when England still had summer weather - when Blackie walked to the wicket from the Colin Atkinson Pavilion was to be touched by a very individual, parochial, vulnerable type of brilliance.

There was never anything very elegant, or refined, or polished, about Blackie. Although many tried to make him conform to the fitness-conscious stereotype of the modern professional cricketer, he never quite managed it. Like Colin Milburn or John Jameson before him, or Samit Patel or Mark Cosgrove after him, Blackie was more interested in hitting the cover off the ball. Ultimately, as Andy Bull records, his indolence was too much for Justin Langer and the parting of the ways came. For me, and, I'm sure, more than a few others, the County Ground has never quite been the same again.

Blackie did his fair share of bowling, where economy of effort was all and 398 first-class wickets tell the tale of a decent operator, and tended to graze in the field. But he could catch, of course, and throw the ball miles, sometimes even over the top of the stumps. Batting, though, was really his thing.

Although he was brought up in north Debyshire there was always something of the rustic Westcountryman about Blackie. Taunton was his adopted home, and, with his parents always around as they were, it never felt anything but right. As he padded to the crease, his sleeper of a bat by his side, you could fondly imagine that he carried echoes of the way Ian Botham used to do the same. Without the same self-regard and flamboyance, sure, but with just the same murderous intent.

His ability to guide the ball to the Taunton ropes with a sweetly-timed off-drive or a robust leg-side punch, or, when his shoulders really came into play, deposit it into the St.James's Street car park or the Tone, got him noticed by England. In his second ODI he made a powerful, rapid 82 against India on a steamy Colombo evening; he was always ruddy-faced but after that knock he looked as though he was about to explode. But he never built on it. At international level he came to be regarded as a bowler who could bat a bit, but that was so, so wrong. At the very top level his statuesque footwork and relative immobility always undermined him, but at county level he was a rough-hewn gem.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of Bull's piece is the photo above it, taken at Nagpur in March 2006. Blackie receives his first and only England Test cap from his captain Andrew Flintoff, with his fellow debutants Monty Panesar and Alastair Cook alongside him. Typically Monty looks happy but a little diffident, perhaps unsure of his ability to fulfil the trust placed in him by the selectors. Equally characteristically, Cook looks self-assured, pleased, but without elation. For him this was always going to happen. Blackie just beams. He is simply overjoyed to be there, perhaps unable to believe his luck. He knows the moment may not last, and he is determined to enjoy it while he can. In the game that follows, Cook scores 60 and 104 not out and Panesar gets Tendulkar out. Blackie makes just four and bowls seven insipid overs for twenty-eight runs. For his fellows the rest is history, but he is never asked back.

But for Blackie there is little sadness. There are 11,000 first-class runs at a shade under 40. There are Championship titles in the colours of Durham and Warwickshire. And, at Taunton, as the ground continues to change, there is lasting hero worship.

There are some things fitness can't buy.

Short Memory Syndrome

When I described Alastair Cook as a great batsman last week I was getting carried away. Carried away on a cocktail of admiration for his batting, especially since he became England's one-day captain, and the type of mellow 'everything's right with the world' feeling that a walk in the Devon countryside in the late winter sunshine can bring on.

For all Cook's precocity, and runs, and undeniable rightness for what he's doing, it's hard to see him ever quite being great. He'll break a few run accumulaton records, sure, but you can do that without being great (just ask Geoffrey Boycott. Well, no, actually, don't ask Geoffrey Boycott.). He'll do for the future, though.

Kevin Pietersen, though, is different. As his century in the final ODI between England and Pakistan last Tuesday showed, he is capable of breaking bowlers in a way that no other English batsman from the foreseeable past has.

I always thought Pietersen had it in him to be great, but the type of long silence which he has endured in the one-day game over the past three years can lead even those of us who don't earn our living from writing to be sucked in by the short memory syndrome which habitually affects full-time journalists.

Apart from the reminder of just how good Pietersen can be, the lasting fascination of the innings was the way in which it illustrated how a prolonged period of under-performance can diminish the confidence of even the best.

The Pietersen who went to the wicket in the final match of the series wasn't very different in a technical or physical sense from the one who began the previous game.

He, like the rest of us 153 balls later, had just remembered what he could do.

Look in the Book

After a period of well-deserved success in the one-day arena - and it's not as if that's never been known before, only for it crumble to dust at the next time of asking - England will currently be feeling a bit better about themselves. While Ian Bell has had no opportunity to redeem himself, Kevin Pietersen went some way yesterday towards bolstering his faltering reputation and Eoin Morgan has done what is customary for him while wearing a blue shirt (not that anyone ever doubted that he would).

Alastair Cook, of course, didn't really need to rejuvenate his reputation. As becomes more and more evident as he plays, Cook doesn't really do self-doubt, or failure, or long periods of scorelessness. He just - and this is especially true if his merits are questioned - scores runs.

England have had plenty enough players over the years who have flattered to deceive, or that everyone thought would dominate the world, without ever producing the scores to justify the hype. Cook, too, had the scores from a young age, and this precocity of achievement was sustained throughout his early years in the Test arena, but nobody ever seemed convinced that he wasn't riding for a fall. In Test cricket this came with his prolonged slump in form in 2009 and 2010, in the limited-overs arena with a persistent inability to score runs quickly and consistently enough.

Of course, all players fail, but the real test of a player's quality is how he deals with that failure. Not for Cook the retreat into obscurity or the meek acceptance that anything was beyond him. No, just do the work and come back to score 766 runs in an Ashes series before starting to churn out one-day hundreds at a strike-rate beyond reproach while shouldering the additional burdens of captaincy.

Cook always appears a man without artifice or self-regard. He is happy to let his runs do the talking, secure in the knowledge that his record - in terms of runs and centuries scored in Test cricket at a young age - stands comparison with the greats. And, as has been said here before, he always looks as though he is one of those fortunate people who has found something that he can do really, really well, and is determined to make the most of his luck and timing. This is a man who was put on earth to bat. And bat he does.

But this gift, and the ability to make the most of it, is not coincidental. Cook rarely shows much emotion but look at him in the moments after he is dismissed. This is someone who, no matter how many runs he has made, really hates getting out.

Regardless of his runs, most of us have probably been guilty of underestimating Cook. I, for one, always felt that the next truly great English batsman would be Ian Bell, or by adoption, Kevin Pietersen.

I was wrong. The next truly great English batsman is Alastair Cook.

Related Pasts, Different Futures

Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook are both still young men, but they have played together for a very long time. For a string of Essex junior sides, for England Under-19s, for Essex, and for England.

Bopara's career remains in an uncertain place: inconsistent but occasionally dominant at county level, unfulfilled and flatteringly deceptive at international level. Cook is one of the most prolific batsmen in the world.

So you have to wonder what was going through each of their minds when Bopara came to the wicket yesterday afternoon, on the hiding to nothing to end them all, and with Cook already 247 not out.

Bopara doesn't appear the type of person to lack confidence or retreat in the face of others' achievements, but, this time, he could be forgiven the odd stray thought about where, in their 27th years, each of their careers is heading.

Bopara, out cheaply, will, as night follows day, return to Essex and a doubly uncertain future. Such is the stature, stability and brilliance of this England team that opportunities are not going to come along very often these next few years. And by the time one does, it is likely that someone else - Taylor, or Stokes, or Bairstow - will be chosen. There is a strong possibility that Ravi Bopara will never again bat in a Test match for England.

The way in which both men returned to the new Edgbaston dressing rooms said much for their fates. Bopara was ushered from the field by an uncertain smattering of applause, people displacing their embarassment by rummaging in bags or chatting to their neighbours. Cook, in his turn, received an unconditional standing ovation, but there was also a certain poignancy to it.

Bopara looked unemotional, but was, you suspect, quietly shattered. Cook, his iron concentration having for once slipped at the last, was more visibly disappointed, his failure to reach 300 for a brief moment all he could think about. For all his peerless appetite for batting and hatred of dismissal, Cook knows that few players get more than one chance to make a triple-hundred in Test cricket. He is certain to make many more centuries for England, but, in all probability, he won't quite pass this way again.

But at least he will be there. And soon, as England's next captain, the team will be his. For Bopara, life on the county circuit (perhaps embellished by an IPL contract and some one-day international appearances) may be all there is.

Bopara and Cook have played together for a very long time. But for the next few years they may not be seeing very much of each other.

Different Questions

Sometime in the early years of this century - 2002, I think - I was driving with a friend to a rugby match in the Midlands. We spent much of our time talking about cricket, and I wondered aloud who the next 'truly great' English batsman would be.

At the time, with the England of Fletcher and Hussain just starting to emerge from years of disorganisation and inconsistency, the obvious choice, in retrospect, would have been Michael Vaughan. However, although I hadn't seen him play, I had already absorbed the hype which surrounded Ian Bell and suggested that he was the one.

Alastair Cook's name never entered my head. I knew of him but his first-class debut was still for the future and he was just too young to be a contender.

Scroll forward a few years, and, with Bell still flattering to deceive, Cook is an England player, and one or two images from his early Test career remain in the mind. The first comes from the initial stages of his first Test innings at Nagpur. Irfan Pathan drops short and Cook creams him through midwicket in a languid, dismissive manner which signifies a rare combination of talent and temperamental impregnability. He goes on to reach 60 and then passes a hundred in the second innings.

A few months later I'm at Lord's watching him play his first Test innings in England, batting at three after Strauss and Trescothick. With Cook past fifty, one of the Sri Lankan seamers, Maharoof or Kulasekara, drops short. With a field athlete's sureness of foot, Cook rocks back and caresses the ball through mid-on for four. It is a stroke which speaks of heady ability and resonates a sense of belonging. It appears obvious to me that he will be at the heart of the England team for years and years to come.

He has, of course. But, as for everybody, the game has become harder, more testing. By late in the English summer of 2010 his foothold in the side is loosening. He has problems around off-stump and he is regarded solely as a Test player. It is assumed that he cannot play one-day cricket.

He battles his way to a century in defeat at The Oval, then goes to Australia and makes 766 runs in the series as England humiliate Australia. When Andrew Strauss decides to retire from one-day cricket, Cook is appointed captain. Still, though, the runs come, and with a previously undiscerned fluency. Different questions begin to be asked. Instead of whether he is worth his place in the team, people wonder how just how good he is.

Cook is no genius in the manner of a Lara, or a Tendulkar, or a Ponting. And, among his England contemporaries, both Bell and Pietersen are blessed with greater gifts. He can be stylish and pleasing to the eye, but he relies more for his runs on patience which is unusual by modern standards and a mind which overcomes perceived obstacles as if they don't exist.

As I've written before, there is a quality that is at once both utilitarian and natural about Cook. While there are players who make the game look easier, there are few who give a stronger impression that it is what they were put on earth to do.

In the widest sense of the term he isn't a truly great player, but, as we enter the taut second half of England's summer, he currently looks as good, perhaps better, as anyone they have had in a very long time.

Cook is still only 26 years old. He, and his England side, will have many more days in the sun.

Fantasy World

With England engaged in an insipid, rain-ruined first Test of the summer, one of the more eye-catching stories of the last week was that of Adrian Shankar, the former Cambridge University captain, who was recently signed by Worcestershire only to be released after barely more than a fortnight amid allegations that he had exaggerated his experience and falsified his age in order to gain a contract.

Leaving aside what this says about Worcestershire's competence and gullibility off the field (and they're not too crash hot on it at the moment either), the strange demise of Shankar led me to recall the case of the late Barbadian Donald Weekes, whom Wisden, never a publication too wedded to hyperbole, described in his obituary as 'a yarn-spinner of international calibre'. Among other things, Weekes claimed to have scored 700 not out in a single innings, and was lavishly profiled in The Cricketer in 1975, an article which made quite an impression on me as a kid and continued to do so until Philip Bailey (now Wisden's Chief Statistician) informed me about twelve years later that it was a load of rubbish.

I noticed Shankar's name when Worcestershire signed him; partly because they'd unwisely made great play of signing someone who had never been much good, but also because I once met a member of his family.

During a rain break at Lord's a few years ago I got chatting to a couple of blokes from Bedford in the Warner Stand. One of them claimed to be Adrian Shankar's father, and I don't see any reason why he would have been lying. Looking back, he seemed more proud of the fact that his son had been to Cambridge than that, as has repeatedly been mentioned over the last few days, he'd played in the same school side as Alastair Cook, even though (before he started knocking years off his age) he was several years older. He probably knew his son's main claim to fame in the future would revolve around someone he'd played with.

Sporting success carries great currency among men. People look up to you. It might, perhaps indirectly, get you girls. Anyone can make anything up, but, in the end, you always get found out, and you end up where you deserve. Where your talent, and all the other ingredients that go to make a player, take you.

Adrian Shankar will never play county cricket again. Alastair Cook has made seventeen Test centuries.

The Best of Times

For virtually anyone associated with the England cricket team, and especially the young men talented and fortunate enough to play for it, the 43 days between 25th November 2010 and 7th January 2011 will have been among the best times they will ever know on a cricket field.

For some among them those times have been better - or more memorable for different reasons - even than that.

To many, Alastair Cook seemed destined by virtue of his hesitancy and looseness to be Mitchell Johnson's fall guy. He leaves Australian shores an unlikely hero - still young, undemonstrative, slightly coy - but with a counter-intuitive stamina and toughness which nailed the Australian coffin shut. He may never quite pass this way again, but simply to watch the shape of his body as he defended the ball in Sydney was to see a man at ease, doing what he was put on earth to do.

Ian Bell is a man who, after years of wondering, knows his limitations. He knows that when it comes to batting he has no limitations. With Cook the lingering feeling is that he has surpassed himself in recent weeks, but with Bell there is the certain knowledge that there is much more to come.

Watching Bell these days can be an almost epiphanic experience. This was never true of Paul Collingwood, but few England players have ever made as much of their talent, responded as well to adversity or fielded with as much versatlity and athleticism. His vital role in the development of what could be England's side of sides should never be forgotten.

In a similar way to Ian Bell, James Anderson is now a mature man of high skill who knows his own game and his own mind. And, as with Bell, this should be no more than the beginning.

In 1956, John Arlott, looking back to 1947, wrote of a 'fair-haired, athletic-looking young man with a sweeping run-up and a high, easy, natural delivery-swing. It was as exciting a spell of bowling as I have ever watched and in the poverty of our post-war game, the man responsible for it was a heady promise of resurgent greatness in English cricket'. The man Arlott was writing about was Chris Tremlett's grandfather Maurice, and, at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, his late-flowering grandson exemplifies the future promise of another England side in a similar way.

These have been the best of times. But, for Strauss's England, there will be many more.

A Full House of Negatives

Whatever happens as this game plays out, things look truly grim for Australia. Grim in a way they haven't against England for a quarter of a century.

One of my favourite memories from the summer before I went to university is the day Gooch and Gower flogged a pallid Australian attack all over Kennington. Today, with the hapless Xavier Doherty playing the part of Murray Bennett, and Shane Watson as Simon O'Donnell, Cook, Trott and Pietersen did much the same.

For the majority of the twenty-five years which have elapsed since that day, the Australian cricket team has had it all. It still has, only now it is a full house of negatives: a threadbare, poorly selected attack; batsmen who are ageing, or lack form, or both; fielders who cannot take catches which should be routine at Test level.

It's still possible, given the benign pitch and the possibility of rain later in the game, for Australia to escape defeat in Adelaide, but the psychological damage being done here is huge.

Australia's glory years were really over as soon as all the greats had retired, but full confirmation of what this has meant on the pitch has taken a while longer to come.

Now, though, it is over. And there is nothing that anyone - least of all Ponting - can do about it.

Don't Believe The Hype

I don't usually bother reading the British tabloids. They're occasionally amusing - sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly - but what they write rarely bears much relation to the real world.

So I had to laugh when I happened to catch part of the sports slot on BBC Breakfast this morning and Chris Hollins showed the back pages of various papers to the camera.

One (I think it was The Sun but I couldn't swear to it) appeared to be describing Alastair Cook's innings (which deserves credit for being made, initially, under huge pressure, but which ended as an exercise in filling his boots against a poor attack on a bland pitch) as 'The Greatest Innings Ever'. There was no question mark.

Er, not quite, lads, in fact not even close to the top 50. But thanks for the laugh.

Hard to Love

I began writing here in 2006, just a few months after Alastair Cook came into the England team, and, in the first few years I was writing, I mentioned him a lot.

Over the last couple of years I haven't written about him so often, as for much of that time he's been battling a range of technical demons and his runs haven't been as plentiful or consistent as they were in his early days.

He's a player, and person, of contradictions. Still young, boyishly good-looking, often uncertain of manner, but with an old pro's patience, steely determination and hatred of getting out.

He can be hard to love, but when he plays like that it's not hard to see why his record's so good.

Tomorrow morning he and his partner, Jonathan Trott, can take the game right away from Australia.

Exchanging Congratulations

As the congratulations were exchanged and the hands shaken at the end of the Mirpur Test, one's thoughts inevitably drifted to those of the players. Michael Carberry, who looked happy but perhaps a little wistful, will have known that there's a good chance that his Test career has ended almost as soon as it began, while James Tredwell, well though he acquitted himself over the five days, will have known that it might be a long time before he's seen again in England whites. A few romantics may talk about England playing two specialist spinners, but when apart from in the sub-continent (and then rarely) is it ever going to happen? Barring a serious loss of form in all areas, Graeme Swann is destined to remain England's sole spinner for the foreseeable future.

Tim Bresnan's sentiments will have been different. A big bear of a Yorkshire lad with a winning smile and an instinctively confident attitude, he looked, with his ability to extract occasional but potent bounce and movement from the most soporific of tracks and his uncomplicated batting, like a player who could stay in England's Test match mix for a while. Having troubled the Bangladesh batsmen on their own dead surfaces, he's sure to do so in this country, and the fact that Graham Onions' back injury is worse than first thought may mean that he gets a chance to do so. For his ability to look as though he was enjoying the hard work and for maintaining his equanimity in a way that the increasingly annoying Stuart Broad would do well to copy, you don't need to look far beyond him as the quiet success of the trip.

The batting was as good as it needed to be. Cook was outstanding and KP showed that rumours of his demise (so persistent that I stupidly started to believe them myself) were greatly exaggerated. Trott, as The Old Batsman writes, is a potential complication, but an interesting one. With his obvious mental resilience he has a good base on which to build; his Warwickshire colleague Ian Bell should now go from strength to strength (although I've said that before).

Bangladesh, though much improved, are still weak, but with the heat and the dust it's a tough tour. Whatever the deficiencies of their tactics and the limits of their ambition, England deserve credit for emerging unscathed and remaining the only major country that's yet to lose to Bangladesh in any form of the game.

And, for that, Eoin Morgan, currently engaged on IPL business, must be thanked.

Caution

While I don't think I was completely wrong to write of Bangladesh's relative improvement, they haven't looked particularly strong opponents over the last three days. Their bowling lacks penetration, their fielding has often been poor and their batting has been variable. Tamim Iqbal, Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim have shown decent technique and more than a little class with the bat, but others in the top order have looked ill-equipped to deal with the England seam attack, especially when Stuart Broad pitched the ball short.

For this reason, England's tactics have looked over-conservative in the extreme, playing just four genuine bowlers and failing to enforce the follow-on this morning, something which condemned the game to a prolonged period of stagnation. It would have been far better for them to emphasize their superior class by putting Bangladesh in again, but their approach has been at one with the over-prepared caution which seems standard fare in modern Test cricket.

Cook's batting was a lot more impressive, his authoritative and entertaining hundred confirming his return to his best form, and Pietersen has also showed that he's close to being back in the groove. It was only a matter of time, and it may be that my own judgement was as cautious and orthodox as England's when I started to question his confidence.

We've also seen one of the most impressive pieces of ground fielding by an England player for many a year. Whatever the duration of his career in Test cricket - and it may well be a short one - Michael Carberry has at least made a lasting impression in an area of the game in which he really excels.

Recovering Composure

Watching England build with composure and patience against a one-man attack yesterday was a reasonable way to spend the time. Especially if you're just starting to emerge from a hideous bout of flu which has rendered your Christmas a complete non-event.

But then, with Cook and Bell having made good runs you're left to ponder (those elsewhere who know me as a defender of Bell may be amused by this) whether you've been giving them too hard a time.

Cook yes, Bell no. Cook merely reminded one of his main quality, and that which sets him apart from almost every other young English batsman you can think of. Patience. With that, a shedload of runs under his belt in Test cricket already (and he's only just 25) and some necessary technical work under way he'll be around for a while yet. No wonder Boycott likes him.

Ian Bell was poised, stylish and engaging late in the day, all the things he tends not to be when the fur is really flying. But, while his unbeaten fifty will have reminded a few people that technique isn't really the problem, his temperament, which is, is highly unlikely to be tested again in this game.

Elsewhere the obvious was reaffirmed. Ntini is finished, but Morne Morkel has the capacity to do some serious damage worldwide over the next few years if he can continue to bowl with the persistence, pace and aggression which he showed yesterday.

Can he back it up, though? It's a problem Bell and Cook know all about.