Cook Must Go. NOW! (As test captain)

[Arthur Crabtree]

Cook scored a lot of runs in India. Hard to believe he hasn't done better than many others over the years overall. maybe not in the last two years though.

Flower owns a fair amount of the troubles after his period in charge. But Cook (to me) has underachieved as skipper. After the Ashes, there were three very winnable series, and England stumbled to one win. Rebuilding or not, a win/loss/draw is a poor return against these sides. They failed to capitalise on many winning positions, and frequently capitulated from strong ones. In my view, chances have been continually spurned in the field.

[alfie]

Cook scored a lot of runs in India. Hard to believe he hasn't done better than many others over the years overall. maybe not in the last two years though.

Flower owns a fair amount of the troubles after his period in charge. But Cook (to me) has underachieved as skipper. After the Ashes, there were three very winnable series, and England stumbled to one win. Rebuilding or not, a win/loss/draw is a poor return against these sides. They failed to capitalise on many winning positions, and frequently capitulated from strong ones. In my view, chances have been continually spurned in the field.

There is truth in what you say , Arthur. I would agree that England should have done better against Sri Lanka and West Indies ; and that some blame for their failure to do so must attach to Cook. Where I disagree with you - and many on here - is the degree to which Cook should be held responsible.
Coming back after the Ashes disaster , with several new players , was never going to be easy. Nevertheless , England certainly did fail to capitalise on ...perhaps strong, rather than "winning" positions , might be more accurate ? But certainly I recall notably a ceding of initiative to Matthews , which had serious negative consequences...so yes , I am critical of Cook for that series result. I don't think he did well - whether because of the pressure , including his own lack of runs ; or just due to his lack of confidence in operating without oversight from Flower.
However , I would contend that his captaincy has in general terms improved markedly from that point. (As has his batting ,coincidentally or not) He is probably never going to be put up with the great leaders ; but
I think his on field handling of a somewhat limited attack has been mostly adequate , and sometimes better than that . You can pick things he has done wrong , of course : but I suspect if most international captains were subjected to the critical anaysis that seems to have been focused on Cook since England started to decline . they'd all be caught out occasionally. In other words , there may be a bit of "give a dog a bad name" about some of the complaints...
I don't really want to go into too many specifics (take to long , too boring) ... but one thing you , Arthur , often comment on is Cook's tendancy to take out his slips too early. I actually agree with you up to a point on this : seems to me he often does dispense with some close catchers earlier than I'd like (though he isn't Robinson Crusoe in that respect , amongst modern captains). And on a few occasions I have felt he'd have done better to retain more slip/gullly fielders for Stokes in particular...but I also note that on slow pitches , with sometimes rather erratic bowlers , there may be call for fielders in other positions ; and unlike Botham , or us , the captain on the field generally only has nine of them to deploy at a time
No matter ; this is all a question of degree , as I indicated above. And
What annoys some of us , I think , is that much of the criticism seems to have taken on a personal edge. More knave than fool , as it were. Not sure there is really a lot of evidennce for this.

MY keyboard is playing up so I'll stop now...

[alfie]

..yeah , messy ...and I can't seem to edit it properly for some reason. Never mind ; got most of what I wanted to say in there , if less tidily than I'd like.

One more point though - on the public remarks. First off , Cook is not good in this area. One advantage of a change in captain to Joe Root is I suspect we'd get more interesting press conferences

But the only Cook comments that really annoyed me were the foolish complaints about Warne's criticism - that just made him look silly , even if his annoyance at some of Warne's stuff was reasonable enough. Should have just rung him up or buttonholed him in the bar...
The remarks after the World Cup were basically expressing personal disappointment. If there was just a touch of "didn't do a lot of good , sacking me" about it can you really blame him ? Probably better kept his mouth shut yes , but is showing how you actually feel about something , when asked , altogether a bad thing ?
And the criticism of Graves ...well what a fuss about nothing ! He cracked a joke , about Yorkshiremen ...Graves doesn't seem to mind. Boycott , though...

Summing up : I am happy to retain Cook in charge for now. Root will presumably take over - and may well do a better job. In an ideal world he won't do so while England are in the middle of this "difficult" rebuiding. But we don't live in an ideal world , so circumstances may force a change earlier than one might wish. And it will still be too late for many...

Better go before the thought police are on my case

[Aidan11]

The press seem to have put their own spin on Ian Bell's comments yesterday and pointing the finger for KP's ban firmly on Cook

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricke ... ersen.html

[Arthur Crabtree]

Good posts Alfie. Obviously I don't agree with all that (there's no point restating my case) but it's a good position. I don't think only having nine fielders prevents him from attacking though. Other captains manage it. He is defensive by nature and policy; it feels like an addiction.

[Arthur Crabtree]

The press seem to have put their own spin on Ian Bell's comments yesterday and pointing the finger for KP's ban firmly on Cook

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricke ... ersen.html

If Steely is as sensitive as he seems (apparently criticising Agnew for saying something positive about KP's commentating...) it's easy to imagine that Bell's comments may well lead to difficulties between them. Trust issues?

[braveneutral]

Bell doesn't toe the line but does it all under the radar.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Amazing that he has been vc, but he never hears anything. He's never in the room.

[braveneutral]

Too busy down the nightclubs allegedly.

[Aidan11]

Bell will soon "disappear".

[sussexpob]

Coming back after the Ashes disaster , with several new players , was never going to be easy. Nevertheless , England certainly did fail to capitalise on ...perhaps strong, rather than "winning" positions , might be more accurate ? But certainly I recall notably a ceding of initiative to Matthews , which had serious negative consequences...so yes , I am critical of Cook for that series result. I don't think he did well - whether because of the pressure , including his own lack of runs ; or just due to his lack of confidence in operating without oversight from Flower.

I think you see glimpses of it everywhere in England's fielding. To use probably the most left field example, England had New Zealand following on in Wellington in 2013 and knew that the forecast would be for no play on day 5, but simply ignored that forecast and had Panesar come on first change and allow New Zealand to block on a pitch that had some pace, bounce and live grass on it.... Broad had ripped apart New Zealand in the first dig and hardly got the ball in the second.

England could in no way lose the match, and New Zealand were in no position to win it with just under a days play left. To have a spinner getting little help from the surface bowling to negative fields and dour batsman just looking to get through a day, it was very uninspiring.

[braveneutral]

Disappear like a diaspora.

[sussexpob]

I know these are small examples, but ones from memory that stick out of Cook's captaincy is his inability to understand the exact nature of players weaknesses in technique and set fields accordingly. The example I can think of is Shane Watson, who's last two Ashes series he has scored half his career centuries in, and are the best statistic series he had in the 4 year period separating the Ashes series.

At Perth, when his aggressive century put the nail in England's series hopes, it was amazing that a guy who takes such a huge stride forward and tends to get thicker edges was batting without someone in the gully. He kept on hitting the drives that slide off the face much squarer than others in the air, into vacant areas, and ended up pummelling a quick score.

Other teams have two gullys in for Watson. In fact, I have seen him bat with two gullys and no slips before against South Africa, and still find fielders, because he drives on the up a lot with not great balance.

I do remember (I think at Adelaide) Anderson calling for two gully's to him with Strauss in charge when he got a start in the 2010/11, and they got him. So this isn't a team awareness of tactical thing because they used that before to get him out. The only difference was the captain, who simply retreated fielders to the boundary as the score wracked up

[greyblazer]

I have seen enough to say Cook has no tactical awareness. For instance, when Anderson bowled that fine spell with the old ball on Day 3 in the Barbados Test, Cook's captaincy was poor.

[Aidan11]

I see the OED now defines "Trust" as -

Don't cross Alastair Cook