Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

As I actually expected , Cook knew he'd had enough and has stepped down at the logical time. Think management would have preferred him to stay on for another year but he clearly no longer had the spirit for it ....hopefully Root (presumably) will be as ready for the task as Cook himself suggested he was...

Equally unexpectedly some fairly ungenerous assessments of his tenure on here but I'm not going to argue about that - everyone is entitled to their own prejudices

For my part I think he did a mostly good job : although not a natural leader he got the best out of quite a mixed bunch of characters to win important series in India and SA , as well as winning two Ashes series ; and if he failed at the low point - the disastrous Australian tour of 2013/14 he had the gumption to stick around and preside over the (still incomplete) recasting of the team. His critics (on here and elsewhere) will never agree but I think he'll probably be seen more kindly in hindsight than he sometimes was at the time.

Maybe not by KP

so opinions you disagree with are "prejudices" ?

thats nice ...

rich1uk wrote:so opinions you disagree with are "prejudices" ?

thats nice ...

Oh come on , rich ....I did add a "smiley"...

Not sure why one view is biased, and another is not. My view is an honest one that takes into account the good and the bad. I've probably written more words in praise of Cook than anyone who posts here, and admittedly, more in criticism. Cook hasn't been a successful England captain in terms of win loss ratio (one of the weaker ones). I suspect his inheritance was broken more by Flower than himself, and he was ill served by Moores. But Cook was pretty compliant in their plans, and that was one of his weaknesses. Cook divides followers like no one I can remember among England captains. His passing was never going to inspire a eulogy from everyone.

cook has been a fantastic batsman for england, i've just never been a fan of his captaincy, he was also pretty lucky imo that when he had the 2 year spell between may 2013 and may 2015 without a century that we were already struggling to find a partner for him, let alone replace him, or he might have lost the captaincy then. in fact i thought the captaincy should have been taken off him during that period to allow him to concentrate on his batting, which was way more important to the team than his captaincy was.

if people want to have selective amnesia about his flaws and his poor periods so be it. i've always tried to give people credit when they deserve it and criticise them when they deserve that.

i think i even said something nice about shane watson once, i think it was a tuesday.

The truth is Cook took over a team that had lost a battle to be considered the best team of its generation, over saw a period where that team declined shortly afterwards, and has since failed to oversee a transition in making positive steps back to that position.

I look at the teams around him. Clarke took a fractured Aussie team and turned them into a seriously motivated and strong team. Kohli is currently making India a strong proposition to face and certainly at home they are becoming untouchable. McCullum took New Zealand forward in a couple of years from the team in 2010-11 that were decimated, to a proper team. Graeme Smith made South Africa the best team post Waugh's Australia. Even Misbah transformed Pakistan's tortured team into a viable test unit.

Cook has won some, but he hasn't come close to recreating the captains success he replaced. He was involved in the old teams premature break up, and hasn't been successful in replacing it.

There is not much more you can say. He inherited a team that every captain in about 15 years had a positive impact on, and has dragged them down to a very average position.

The project failed. Other captains have done notable positive things around him with far less resources. Cook had everything and didn't do enough. He failed.

And yes, I'm prejudice . No real man watches the character assassination of his team mates after a 5-0 and hides behind his bosses. Cook lost my respect then.

I assume therefore that Cook was responsible for the failure of the ECB to find replacements for key players and managing its players? It's interesting that all of that suddenly seems to have been heaped on Cook post India as if he is somehow in charge of all aspects of English cricket rather than just 11 players on a field.

Apart from being responsible for strategy on the field, the captain fronts the team's contact with the coaches/etc, and he represents the coaches/etc in their contact with the team. That's a common role of a leader I think. So that's a fair amount of responsibility. Of course, it's not his job to unearth a player (though Cook seemed to be advocating a CC2 county batter for the squad last summer).

Making sure players feel like they belong in international cricket and as part of a team with a strong goal and focus is what the captain has to do, and on Cooks watch several senior batsman have complained of lack of support, and others coming into the team have complained that they felt isolated. There are rumours of dressing room factions under his watch.

And while serious questions needed asking, most of the press were feeding us with the superman bs about Cook. It seemed the ECB spent many a favour propping Cook and branding him as some battle hardened leader, rather than focus on his defects.

The aforementioned post lists a lot of names that you can tell were respected by their team on a whole. They were also decisive captains, people you feel elevated others. Cook was too busy elevating himself to worry about his team.

He's not the only one responsible, maybe a minor player. But a man with guts and more conviction would not have been such a passenger to some of the quite frankly terrible periods under his management. I can imagine the England dressing room is fraught with negativity at times, coming in as a new player you need backing from the captain. I'd hesitate that cooks management ability had an impact on the lack of talent stepping up, even if it's a more minor issue than others

I also think that his teams behaviour on the field at times shows how much influence and control he had on his team. I'd guess that many people in the dressing room seen him as a doormat