And yet, that is exactly what happened. Over 38 innings in his last 20 Tests from Nagpur to Lord’s, England’s Test captain has made 1059 runs at 27.86 runs per innings. He has made 2 centuries in those 38 innings and crossed 50 8 times in all.
As grim as Cook’s numbers look, they are not uncommon for Test batsmen who have had long, successful careers. What is interesting about Cook is how readily his batting form has been linked to England’s fortunes. It is Alastair Cook’s misfortune that his 20 Test slump includes a 10 Test stretch from Brisbane to Lord’s with 7 defeats and no wins. “Lack of support from senior players” has been a common refrain in English analysis over the past few days.
It is a mistake burden Cook’s batting with England’s poor play. Mark Taylor and Sourav Ganguly went through similar slumps when they ought to have been at their peak as batsmen. From the Boxing Day Test of 1995 to the third Test against New Zealand at Hobart in 1997, Taylor made 891 runs at 27 in 20 Tests and 35 innings. But Australia won 12 of those Tests and did not lose a series. They did lose a one-off Test in Delhi. Taylor’s best innings during that phase came in a defeat. In all, Taylor reached 50 only 4 times in those 20 Tests (35 innings).
Sourav Ganguly’s slump was worse than Taylor’s. From the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne in 1999, to the Bangalore Test against England in December 2001, Ganguly made 771 runs in 20 Tests (35 innings) at 24.9. His three half centuries included an innings of 84 against Bangladesh in their inaugural Test match, and a 65 not out against Zimbabwe at Delhi. Ganguly’s best innings during this phase was 98 not out in a successful 4th innings run chase at Kandy. Unlike Taylor’s Australians, India didn’t keep winning in this period. And unlike Taylor, Ganguly assumed the captaincy near the beginning of his slump. But they did win the biggest series of Ganguly’s captaincy by a hair’s breadth. One of the most underrated aspects of the miracle at Eden Gardens in 2001 was that it saved Ganguly’s job. Without that win, we probably would not have seen the Ganguly of 2002 and 2003 – his best seasons as captain. The 2002 tours to West Indies and England and the 2003-04 tour to Australia were Ganguly’s best batting tours as Test captain.
Did Ganguly and Taylor contribute as captains to their team’s success? It has often been argued that Ganguly brought self-belief and steel to the Indian side of the early 2000s. I’ve always found this slightly ridiculous. There were better, more experienced players than Ganguly in that side who had seen the bitter end of the match-fixing scandal and injury troubles. India lost against a declining West Indies side in West Indies in 2002, against a South African side recovering from Cronje and without Allan Donald in late 2001, and against an in-form Sri Lankan side in 2001. They failed to beat Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe in 2001 and were nearly played to a standstill by Nasser Hussein’s English side in December 2001. They split a series against an English side in transition in 2002 and against Steve Waugh’s Warne and McGrath less Australians in 2003-04. India’s Test results under Ganguly consisted of failure as a rule, and success as the exception.
The influence of Mark Taylor’s captaincy (or captaincy in general) is similarly over-rated in my view. Taylor might have been tactically astute, but he had really good bowlers to be tactically astute with. He didn’t have those bowlers in India in 1998 (his bowlers were Paul Wilson, Michael Kasprowicz, Adam Dale, Paul Reiffel, Gavin Robertson and Shane Warne), and no amount of inspired captaincy came in the way of Australia being blown away in the first two Tests. When his best bowlers were available, Australia won even though Taylor failed against the new ball. They beat West Indies at home 3-2 in 1996-97 when Taylor made 153 runs at 17. They won the Ashes in England in 1997 when Taylor made 317 runs at 31.7. And they won in South Africa in 1996-97 when Taylor made 80 runs at 16. Had Australia lost one or more of those series, the history of Australian cricket would have been very different. They could have lost easily had one or more of their bowlers missed games due to injury. McGrath and Warne played all 14 of those Tests. Steve Waugh, Greg Blewett and Mathew Elliott made the bulk of the runs.
Much is made of the value of astute captaincy and leadership in our present age. Success has many fathers, usually at the top. I subscribe to the labor theory of value in cricket. Tests are won because quality bowlers make very few mistakes over after over. Consider these three factors which contributed to Australia’s success in the late 1990s. (a) Glenn McGrath’s accuracy and pace, ball after ball, over after over, (b) Shane Warne’s ability to turn the cricket ball and still control the line and length as no other bowler in his style has done before or since, and (c) Mark Taylor’s astute leadership. I’d suggest to you that the former two contributed to Australian Test wins to a degree many orders of magnitude greater than Taylor’s captaincy, as did the runs made by the other batsmen. Plans and tactics in cricket remain quite simple, just like any theory. Putting them in practice is the hard part. Captains cannot do this without the right bowlers. Batsmen and bowlers do.
There is one big difference between Ganguly and Taylor, and Cook, apart from the fact that their teams won enough (in Taylor’s case, consistently, and in Ganguly’s case, exceptionally against the best team of the day). This was the absence of the massive data and analysis producing management apparatus that Cook’s team has. I wonder how much this proliferation of data, specialists who produce, analyze and use the data, and the different lines of authority that exist as a result of this data affect the work of captaincy. Is the job Cook is doing for England in 2014 at all similar to the job Ganguly and Taylor did for India and Australia fifteen years ago? Even if you think the job on the field is basically the same, given the proliferation of leadership and mentorship positions in today’s Test teams, I’d suggest that far less responsibility for results which can be laid at the captain’s door. Is it really Cook’s fault if his bowlers and his wicket keeper are out of form? Or is it the fault of the people who exist in today’s teams to manage these things – people who didn’t exist 15 years ago?
After Lord’s England’s selectors are faced with two separate questions. First, do the selectors want to persist with Cook as their opener? In my view, they have to. He’s too good a player to be dropped for bad form. And second, do they want to persist with him as captain? Whether or not the two are related, only Cook should decide. If Cook thinks the workload of captaincy is affecting his batting then it should be left to him to decide if he wants to keep working on both, or if he wants to give up captaincy. The selectors cannot justify sacking Cook the captain and say they are doing it to protect his batting. On their part, they must basically decide if they want Cook to be captain. I suspect this question, if posed independent of Cook's batting form, will come down to the availability of a good replacement.
Realistically, the best resolution of this would be for Cook to score some consistent runs in the three remaining Tests of this series. Unless that happens, I suspect that his captaincy and his batting will not be seen separately as they should. The selectors and the support staff would have too much to answer for if they didn't fall back on the idea that the entire problem lay with Cook.
Here's a list of the worst 20 Test spans in the careers of some illustrious batsmen. If I've excluded any name you'd like to know about, please leave me a comment.
