Alastair Cook’s troubles as captain of England’s one-day side point to one of those perennial cricketing conundrums: what does it take to be a good captain?
In the pantheon of leadership, Napoleon Bonaparte’s preference for ‘lucky’ generals is one thing, but there is a sense that Cook could spend a lifetime in a casino, playing roulette at supercasino.com or others, without winning a bean. Captaincy is not a passive business and, just like serious gambling, nor is it anything to do with luck.
The question is pertinent for Cook, who seems to be finding that the burden of leadership is singularly undermining. Despite an early career to rank with any in the game, the England captain is in a tight squeeze right now. His form with the bat has deserted him and, shorn of the iron-clad authority that runs buy, the limitations of his tactical and man-management skills are being held up to question. He’s even dropping catches and admits his position for 2015’s World Cup is uncertain.
Cook averaged just over 19 in the series in Sri Lanka, having somehow limped his way to all of 119 runs from six visits to the middle. But the problems extend further than the current series. In the year of 2014 the left hander has failed to score a century in 20 ODIs. Those are not the figures of a World Cup-winning opener.
But the bigger question that Cook’s paucity of one-day runs throws up is the status of his captaincy. Not many sides are able to carry a non-contributing skipper, even if he is a tactical genius and a supreme motivator of his troops – and Cook is neither of these. Ordinarily, if a skipper is not contributing he will be able to maintain his place in the side only if there is sufficient quality around him to make good of his limited contribution. That is currently not the case with England.
They have been well beaten in Sri Lanka, where, for all the unfamiliarity of the conditions, the disparity in the cold-eyed competitive know-how between the sides is painfully evident.
Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene and Tillakaratne Dilshan bring so much more to the party than Cook’s men that it’s like watching children in the presence of magicians. Wide-eyed with wonder at the spectacle before them, England have been close to mesmerised.
And no-one more so than Cook himself. On more than a few occasions in the series he fell lbw – a sure sign of muddled thinking for a batsman with such a proven craft.
For the time being, England are standing by Cook. That’s probably because they simply don’t have a viable alternative.
But if the key attribute of a good captain – and a one-day captain, in particular – is an ability to work his way out of a tight spot and to come out on top then Cook has one to have another chance to prove himself. He may have to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but there is still time.