Win should not mask problems

Victory was, in the end, overwhelming. England won by the second Test at Edgbaston by nine wickets with four-and-a-half sessions to spare. They’re two-nil up in the four-match series and have now won six Tests in succession.

So, on the surface, all is well. England have, give or take a position or two, a settled side and they’ll go into an away Ashes series with more optimism than any time in the last 25 years.

Yet, scratch beneath the surface, and things are less straightforward.

England have been flattered by their results this summer. They have played against two sides – Bangladesh and Pakistan – who are woefully sub-standard and in conditions that couldn’t have suited England’s bowlers better.

It won’t be like this in the winter. James Anderson, so dangerous when the ball swings and seams, can still look ordinary and innocuous when it does not. And it will not in Australia. The pitches will be flat and the balls used there – Kookaburras rather than the Dukes ball used in England – will provide him with far less assistance.

Australia won’t prove nearly so unforgiving, either. Pakistan captain, Salman Butt, reckoned that his side missed 14 chances at Edgbaston. Had they held even half of them, then England would surely have faced a far tougher run-chase.

There’s growing concern over a couple of England’s batsmen, too. Alastair Cook looks hopelessly out of touch at present, while Kevin Pietersen has now gone 23 Test innings since recording a century. Yes, he made 80 at Edgbaston, but he was missed five times. He won’t enjoy so many lives in Australia.

Cook’s form is causing particular concern. He has now scored just 100 runs in his last seven Test innings and his dismissal in the second innings at Edgbaston, unable to move his feet or retain his balance, hinted at a man in crisis. He’s barely able to play on the off side and needs to be replaced as opener. The Aussies will gobble up Cook in moments.

Harsh? Maybe. Cook was captain of England only five Tests ago and, aged just 25, he’s scored 12 Test centuries and averages 42. He can clearly play.

In current form, however, he is unrecognisable from that man. So, for The Oval, Trott could step up a position (though he’s reluctant) or England could draft in the excellent but uncapped Adam Lyth. He has the class to represent England with distinction.

And then there’s Stuart Broad. Broad, aged 24, has the world at his feet. He’s now developed into a world-class bowler – he’s rated eighth in the world Test rankings – and he will, in time, score Test centuries. More than that, he’s the pin-up boy of English cricket.

But with that comes responsibility. And Broad’s on-field behaviour is ugly. It demeans him and it demeans the game.

He may count himself fortunate to escape a ban for throwing the ball at Pakistan’s Zulqarnain Haider but he needs to learn the lessons. His constant grumbling at the umpires, his moaning at team-mates’ mistakes in the field and his sledging of batsmen are as unattractive as they are unnecessary. He’s a fine player. He needs to let his cricket do the talking and remember his responsibilities as a role-model.

That’s not to say all is doom and gloom. Far from it. The form of Graeme Swann adds weight to Shane Warne’s theory that he the Englishman is currently the best spinner in the world, while Warwickshire’s Jonathan Trott looks wonderfully sound. As England captain, Andrew Strauss, put it, his presence at number three is “immensely reassuring.”

The Test did not go particularly well from a Warwickshire perspective, however. The club were budgeting on selling 45,000 tickets for the Test. In the end, they sold more like 30,000. They did not, as has been reported elsewhere, make a loss on the game, but the profit they have made is well below expectation. As they also failed to hit their targets for domestic T20 sales, membership, the neutral games between Pakistan and Australia and for their general banqueting business, their end of year financial results will be far below budget.

Alastair Cook: my 2008

“KP taking over was like a cold shower on a sticky day”
“Vaughany had been there for a long time and he was an unbelievable captain in terms of his achievement. But life moves on. That said, we should really have beaten South Africa at Edgbaston. It was only an unbelievable innings from Graeme Smith that condemned Vaughany. In terms of Test cricket, that innings was the best I’ve seen. It was 90/4 and South Africa managed to get 280/5. Smith played unbelievably well.
“You saw the emotion of Vaughany giving it up. You saw how hard it was. It shows the pressure he was under. The job just took its toll. And maybe sub-consciously we all felt that too. None of us was giving any less effort under Vaughany than we did under Kev. But sometimes it’s good to have a freshen up: if you’re hot and sticky and you have a cold shower… that’s kind of the feeling we had at the Brit Oval. We’d lost the series and Vaughany had gone, so we all decided it was a one-off Test, a new start and we had to win it. There was no point dwelling on what happened before. Under KP, it was new and it was exciting and it was different.”

“Getting picked for Stanford? Sometimes you get lucky.”
“Sometimes you get quite lucky in life. And you have to accept that. And the selectors have looked at the theory: last year England took a whole new side to the Twenty20 World Cup and it didn’t work. It’s about continuity. Sides take time to gel and the one-day squad had done so well against South Africa: everyone knew their roles and we were using Stanford as a warm-up for bigger things.
“Am I looking to develop my one-day game? It’s already happening. I was leading runscorer in the one-dayers in Sri Lanka last year and then again in New Zealand. The biggest challenge for me is to expand my game. It takes a while. You can’t just click your fingers and have one net and start smashing it everywhere and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve sorted it’. These are quite big things to try and change.” 


“You always feel you’re not far away from getting it right.”
“We were bowled out for 83 in Galle last December – but we did hold on for the draw, even if we were helped out by the rain. Then, getting bowled out for 110 and losing to New Zealand in our next Test in Hamilton in February… it was frustrating. You always feel you’re not far away from getting it right. The feeling after that Hamilton game was ‘Let’s prove them all wrong.’ And we won the next two Test matches and won the series. So there’s not much else you can say about that. In my opinion. It’s like a football team: if you lose one game and then win the next nine then it’s all okay.”


“KP is all about constant improvement”
“Experience helps you improve. I know my game has improved against spin. But then again I got 100 on my debut in India in 2006, so that improvement is quite hard to measure… It’s weird how you improve. It’s such a gradual thing. Take our batting coach Andy Flower – towards the end of his career he was probably playing his best cricket. But five years before that he had been No 1 in the world.
“And that’s Kev’s big thing as a captain. He’s like that as a player himself: keep improving, keep improving. There’s so many good batters out there waiting to take my place. And I don’t want that to happen. So you’re prepared to put in the extra hard yards. If I do get dropped, I’ll know it wasn’t because I went to a film premiere or whatever. I’d know I’d given it my all.”

“Winning in New Zealand was the highlight of the year”
“We proved people wrong after getting written off again. That night after winning the third Test in Napier was a very good night as a team. And then beating New Zealand at home too. Everyone will go, ‘Ah boring’ but there’s no better feeling than winning a Test series, after you’ve slogged your guts out for 15 or 20 days. It’s special, no matter who you beat. That’s the true feeling of success as a team.
“If you look at the statistics, not many sides win Test series in New Zealand. New Zealand have a very underrated attack. Yes, they didn’t have Shane Bond but they never gave you much to hit. We all found that. The only time we really broke that was in NZ when we were chasing and when we turned that Test round at Old Trafford. The NZ attack bowled very well at us: not relentless wicket-taking balls but they never gave you much to hit: Kyle Mills, Chris Martin and Jacob Oram – who has got the lowest economy rate in Test cricket – and obviously Vettori is an excellent spinner. So that was probably a surprise to me just how good they were.”

“We work like mad on our fielding”
“When I first started playing I dropped a few catches. But Peter Moores, being an ex-keeper, is an excellent catching coach. And I’ve made a massive effort. Our catching in the England side has improved a helluva lot. It’s one of Mooresy’s areas of expertise. Watch a warm-up and the amount of catching we do, not so much as a group but as individuals, especially now Richard Halsall has come in as our fielding coach. It’s just that little 0.1 per cent improvement every time you do something. Of course some catches stick just because it’s your day. But all that practice gives you the best chance of success.”

Alastair Cook’s autobiography, Starting Out: My Story So Far, published by Hodder and Stoughton, is in shops now

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