Arthur Crabtree wrote:Yes. That must be the first time.
Well, he's not captain any more. They can't sack him now
.
Theoretically they could drop him (they dropped KP for being a bad influence, after all), but he's as close to undroppable as you get in the England set-up: highest run scorer ever, and no obvious competition. Even though Hameed and Jennings show promise, there are three top order spots to fill - I think most people are expecting a line-up of Cook, Hameed, Jennings, Root, Moeen, Stokes, Bairstow for the first test of the summer (with the bowling being Woakes, Broad, Anderson, and A N OTHER selected from Rashid, Finn or Wood).
So in order to be dropped, Cook would have to fail for an extended period (and given his proven ability, he'll be given more grace for a run of bad form than a new player would - we say he's passed his best, but he still scored 1200 runs at over 42 with 2 hundreds and 7 fifties in 2016, which is a poor year by his standards, but still acceptable), AND both Hameed and Jennings would have to succeed well enough to be in the team long term, AND we'd have to identify another opening or top-order batsman to fill the gap. I don't see all three coming to pass for a minimum of 18 months.