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.

In the Wings

It's been re-stated many a time, here and elsewhere, but strength of temperament is vital to success in all top-level sport.

Perhaps the key virtue of Eoin Morgan - and he has many - is his strength of character, embodied in his priceless ability to deliver when success is vital and definitive.

After an uneven winter in Australia and India, during which his previously burgeoning reputation lost some of its lustre, the fact that Morgan, at short order, was able to make an ultimately imperious 193 while the presumed favourite for the spare England place, Ravi Bopara, was scratching his way to a mere 17, underlined this once again.

This season will see important changes to the make-up of England's side, and it's consistent and simply right that Morgan gets first go. Further opportunities for Bopara may come if others can be as convinced as him of his abilities, while Hildreth, James Taylor (of whom more soon) and perhaps even Samit Patel also wait in the wings.

In the meantime, England Lions have a game to win today.

Feeding a Delusion

Owing to a surfeit of things going on in my life - the main one, unfortunately, being the requirement to earn a living somewhere where I can't watch cricket* - Eoin Morgan's latest tour de force largely passed me by. But, to a certain extent, however good it was, the innings shouldn't have told anyone anything they didn't know about the man and his exceptional ability and potential. The fastest-rising one-day batsman on earth? England, yes, that's England, have him, and the confidence generated by his presence and the World T20 triumph continues to course through the side. You could, unless you were someone with experience of watching England over many years and a sound grip on reality, think a new era had arrived...

Elsewhere in the world things are a bit less exciting. South Africa and the West Indies, with a mere five days at their disposal, could only stagger to a draw on a St.Kitts shirtfront. While games such as this may serve to briefly foster the illusion that the West Indies can still compete with the best the world game has to offer, they're feeding a delusion and doing the wider sport damage at the same time.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again. Pointless Tests such as this will send Test cricket to the grave faster than a decade's worth of Twenty20 matches.

Over to you, ICC.

* I understand that all over England people are being given permission to watch the England football team play Slovenia in the World Cup this afternoon. Personally I'm happy to miss the game, but, with a precedent thus set, I look forward to the mass absenteeism that's certain to greet England's next Test series. Oh, sorry, I forgot. It's cricket and it's not the Ashes, therefore nobody in their right mind would ever be interested...

Impossible to Deny

On the face of it Gimblett's Hill, at Craig Kieswetter's adopted home ground, was the ideal place to go to reflect on England's first win an ICC competition, even if the atmosphere (and the temperature) was about as far removed from the Kensington Oval as it was possible to get. The sun shone, and Yorkshire's young opener Adam Lyth looked deeply impressive, but the sort of reflective glow which you can't help feeling the morning after an Ashes win just wasn't there.

In part I think this was because I didn't see very much of the competition, but it's impossible to deny that England's win simply doesn't mean as much to me as it would if four of the most important members of the team hadn't learned their cricket in other countries. While I've regularly paid tribute to the brilliant KP and Eoin Morgan (who has no realistic alternative way of fulfilling his talent), the addition of Kieswetter and Lumb just feels a bit too much like a shift towards a road I'd rather the team didn't go down.

Not that I, or anyone else, can do a lot about it. The potent South African combination of hard, true wickets, sunshine, new world attitudes and a selectorial environment which many find unjust will continue to react with simple economics and a tolerant qualification system to ensure a steady flow of players who are better than most of what the English system will produce.

It's best, I suppose, just to embrace it and relish the success, but, when the inevitable Australian jibes start, well, you kind of know that they have a point.

Innovation

Within 'traditional' cricket circles (and those are probably more firmly established in England than in most other parts of the cricketing globe) it's still fashionable to express one's dislike of Twenty20 cricket. If you take your place among a group of members at a County Championship match and say that you 'hate Twenty20' nobody will think you strange and most of the people within earshot will wholeheartedly agree. For many, who may by now have grudgingly accepted coloured clothing, white balls and floodlights, it's simply that the excess embellishments - the music, the dancers, the sponsored six-hits and time-outs - are too much to take, and I have some sympathy with that view. But for anyone who takes the narrow-minded view that these things simply render the game worthless, I have no time.

It now seems almost trite to suggest that T20 has encouraged innovation, but it's undeniably true, even if it's only been the acceleration of a process which had begun elsewhere. To see Eoin Morgan reversing his hands and scooping the ball over the infield in a way that demands ingenuity, reflexes, strength, timing and confidence is to see a game which, unlike virtually any other ball game you can name, is evolving in a fundamental, technical way, as opposed to just a tactical one.

When did someone last invent a completely new stroke in tennis, or a different way of passing the ball in rugby, or a new way of kicking a football? In those sports you have what you have, and, however good you are, you largely have to work within an established framework. Modern cricket is different.

England didn't deserve to lose yesterday, but those of us in a position to watch someone as gifted and groundbreaking as England's young Irishman are all winners.

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.

Starting Out

It's always nice to be able to say that you saw someone play when they were just starting out, and to be able to claim that you knew that they had 'what it takes' before most people even knew who they were.

I can't quite claim that with Eoin Morgan, but I did see him make an impressive unbeaten fifty in his third game for Middlesex, in the C and G Trophy against Somerset at Bath in June 2006. Morgan then was the same as Morgan now; small, wiry, bottom-handed and astonishingly powerful, with two lofted sixes sailing out of the Rec and showing (along with his mature management of the tail) that here was a nineteen year-old who was likely to go places. I can't remember if I declared that 'that boy will play for England' (mainly because I knew he was Irish), but I hope I did.

Now, of course, he's his adopted country's latest star, with the normally deadpan Bob Willis excitably comparing him to an amalgam of Graham Thorpe and Neil Fairbother. Well, yesterday's hundred against a combative Bangladesh side was exceptional - especially the finish - and England would have been sunk without it, but I'm not sure about the comparisons. Although a gritty left-handed nurdler of supreme mental strength (who I really admired), Thorpe never made an ODI hundred and couldn't hit the ball with as much power as Morgan, and, while the comparison with Fairbrother is nearer the mark, Morgan will hope to do better at Test level (should he get there) than the Lancashire man ever did.

People shouldn't get carried away; until he scores more heavily and consistently in first-class cricket for Middlesex it's hard to avoid having doubts about his suitability for the Test side, but things can change. After all, the basic class is unquestionably there.

Yesterday's was one of the best one-day innings for England in living memory. We want - and will surely see - more.

Eccentric Class

When Darren of The Commentary Position asked me for my Champions Trophy predictions, I didn't hesitate to suggest that England would lose all three of their group games.

Fortunately I was completely, and predictably, wrong, and relished the sight of Shah, Collingwood and the hitherto underestimated Eoin Morgan putting South Africa to the sword yesterday.

It remains to be seen where Colly's Test career goes from here, while Shah's appears finished and Morgan's hasn't started, but in the one-day arena all showed yesterday that they're likely to remain vital cogs in the England 'machine' (not sure that's the right term, really) for a while to come.

With people starting to mutter about his place - and with some of his fielding and running how can you not? - Shah's timely reminder of his huge if somewhat eccentric class was especially welcome. He may often give the impression of a man who's trying to make something which he finds easy look difficult, but he really can bat. While the way in which he started to go into his shell as his hundred approached betrayed the continuing uncertainty of his mentality, 98 made with that degree of dominance and style isn't bad to be going on with, as long as he continues to try to improve his work in the field.

As for the wider reasons for England's resurgence, well, it helps that they're not playing Australia and they're not playing at home. After a long series of defeats a change of opposition usually helps, even if, on paper at least, they're just as good as the last side you faced. And, while the vast majority of England's one-day history has been as barren as the Gobi Desert, their brief periods of plenty - the 1992 World Cup, the 1997 Sharjah tournament, the 2007 Commonwealth Bank Series - have often come away from the capricious conditions and fevered media of home.

Also, England just lost a one-day series 6-1. As another classy eccentric, Bob Dylan, once said, 'when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose'.

Selection Issues

The England selectors' decision to recall Ian Bell and Ryan Sidebottom to the squad for the Durham Test seemed a bit odd, and it doesn't seem likely that either will play.

Bell's made one ton in the Championship and one in the Friends Provident, but, as ever, has mixed in a few abortive starts. Sidebottom has bowled a fair number of overs and taken a few wickets.

Both, though, need more than they've produced so far. Bell requires more and more runs, Sidebottom needs to remain fully fit well into July and be taking consistent wickets to come back into consideration, although, with the suspicion being that a little more experience may be wanted against Australia, he may just be back sooner rather than later.

A player who's already been selected in the England squad for the World Twenty20 and who may start to show his hand elsewhere before too long is Middlesex's young Irishman Eoin Morgan. When I got back from Scotland on Monday morning I slumped on my sofa and watched him destroy Kent with a tremendous display of ingenuity and power and it didn't surprise me at all. I first saw him play at Bath in 2006 and he immediately looked like a classy operator.

While another Middlesex Irishman, Ed Joyce, seemed to me to be poorly treated and prematurely discarded by England, one's feeling - and hope - is that Morgan may be around a lot longer.

Bloody Superb

These days I can usually be found watching Somerset at Taunton, but I grew up following Middlesex to Lord's and Uxbridge in the era of Brearley, Selvey, Daniel, Edmonds, Emburey and the rest. The batsman I've seen make the most runs remains Mike Gatting. My father, 82, is still a life member of the club.

So, of course, I absolutely loved last night's magnificent victory over Lancashire in the quarter-final of this year's Twenty20 Cup, which, taking into account the way in which the profile and performance of the club has declined over the last fifteen years, looks to me like their most significant result since I saw a young Mark Ramprakash ease them to victory over Worcestershire in the NatWest Trophy Final in September 1988.

Eoin Morgan I've known about for a while, and I'll be surprised if he doesn't go a little bit closer than his compatriot Ed Joyce to establishing himself in the England side. Dawid Malan is a newer name, but one who looks instantly like a player we'll be watching for a long time.

And the match itself? Absolutely bloody superb. I know that there are plenty of people around who still regard Twenty20 cricket as the spawn of the devil, but if you couldn't enjoy that, well, what can you enjoy?