Should Alistair Cook have a place cemented in the England team?

[tooextracool]

Also I too would probably drop him down to no.3 on return, I really don't think he and Strauss are an ideal opening pair, they're far too similar to bowl at, lets the opening bowlers get into a rhythm much more easily.

Yeah I agree with you on that, the Cook-Strauss partnership is something that I have myself stated similar reservations about in the past. Perhaps a return to 3 might do him good, but I guess the real issue is finding another opener to replace him with.

 

[GIMH]

The funny thing about Cook and Strauss, though, is that they are apparently one of our most successful opening partnerships statistically.

 

[Richard]

Apparently Cook has made some technical modifications in recent weeks, so we can only hope the long-standing flaws might have been sorted.

 

[GIMH]

Yeah he was playing differently in the Pro40 game that I saw bits of.

 

[Uppercut]

The funny thing about Cook and Strauss, though, is that they are apparently one of our most successful opening partnerships statistically.

Yeah. Teams haven't been using the new ball very effectively over the past couple of years though.

It's easy to forget how magnificent a prospect Cook is, 3,500 test runs and he's only 24. Sometimes I think he'd benefit from some time out of the team, but not right now. If the recent Essex one-dayers he's played are anything to go by he's completely altered his technique outside off-stump anyway.

 

[Penguinissimo]

If the recent Essex one-dayers he's played are anything to go by he's completely altered his technique outside off-stump anyway.

He had a good T20 Cup too, though, and by the time the Ashes rolled round it was same old straight-leg thrusting at the ball etc.

 

[Uppercut]

Not at all comparable really though. He batted well in the T20s but his technique hadn't changed.

Alastair Cook's a player I'm not yet quite ready to lose patience with. You wouldn't expect him to peak for another five or six years, and with an average of 42 he only needs to improve slightly to become a top-class player. There's a time to drop players and a time to stick with them, and I think Cooky's a man to stick with at the moment. Reminds me of where AB De Villiers was 18 months ago.

It's not like the English summer where you can tell him to go work on his batting with Essex for a while. In terms of his development there's nowhere he'll learn more about batting against fast bowling than in South Africa, on seaming decks against a top-class attack. Get him through this and you've got a seriously good opener.

 

[Penguinissimo]

I'd rather they gave him a season's rest and gave someone else a go. Apart from anything else, there are a lot of players who may well be international class (but in the Vaughan, Atherton, pre-retirement Trescothick etc type of making more runs at the top level than at county level). Moore, Denly and Carberry may all be in that mould - we know what Cooky's capable of, and he can be brought back if it turns out he is better than the others.

Not sure a tour of SA is the time for that process, though and in any case whilst the selectors are very keen to rotate their bowlers, batsmen seem borderline undroppable. And when they get dropped, they seem to get back in the side a couple of months later for no particular reason.

 

[Uppercut]

Denly's obviously not test-class. Was out of his depth against Ireland and averages 35.

Carberry and Moore are talented folk, but it would be horrid form to hand them their debut on the first game of a tour to South Africa and ask them to open the batting against Dale Steyn and Wayne Parnell on a greentop. When they inevitably failed, they'd be quickly dropped- think Bopara in Sri Lanka. Now is not the time.

I do agree with the general point regarding England's batsmen getting an easy ride while the bowlers get dropped for no reason at all (Onions at the Oval- wtf?). But there's a time to stick and a time to twist, and for me, this is a time to stick. Give him the tour to South Africa and review his position after that.

 

[Penguinissimo]

Give him the tour to South Africa and review his position after that.

I think that's the right approach. But if he performs against SA like he did against Aus (1 score of note in the whole series, consistently getting out the same way due to the same technical flaws), then he has to go.

 

[Richard]

Apart from anything else, there are a lot of players who may well be international class (but in the Vaughan, Atherton, pre-retirement Trescothick etc type of making more runs at the top level than at county level).

When on Earth did either Atherton or Vaughan do that?

 

[Penguinissimo]

Vaughan averaged 41 in Tests and 36 in FC cricket.

Trescothick averaged 43 in Tests, and averages 40 in FC.

So both were better Test players than county players - and I imagine Trescothick's average was lower still before he embarked on his post-retirement Indian summer.

Athers actually averaged 3 more in FC than in Tests (40 vs 37), but I'd be interested to see his comparative averages once he'd become an England regular - he has been quoted more than once saying that he found it hard to focus on county games after that. A point which I admit is not relevant to the current debate, but explains why I thought of Athers in this context.

EDIT: although it may be that you were taking my assertion literally - of course all scored a greater number of runs at county level, but over a lot more innings.

 

[Richard]

Atherton was far less successful in First-Class cricket before his Test career than during. For Lancs he averaged 36 1987-1989; 1990-2001 he averaged a full 10 runs higher, 46. However hard he found it to motivate himself, make no mistake, he managed it.

Vaughan averaged 37 for Yorkshire 1994-1998, which is a pretty damn decent effort for a youngster who plays half his games on the most seaming deck in the country. Vaughan gets all the "they looked beyond the county averages" because a) he was picked in 1999 after a very poor season and b) he'd done absolutely dreadfully for England A which pulled his career First-Class average down. Vaughan then averaged 50+ from 2000-2003, which encompassed most of his success at Test level. He then averaged 25 2004-2009, when he mostly just popped-up in the occasional game without having the chance to find his touch, and was often trying to play when unfit (to prove his fitness) to boot.

Vaughan was, by-and-large, a reasonably successful batsman at county level, and by-and-large a considerable disappointment at Test level. I'll leave my thoughts about Trescothick aside for here but suffice to say I never rated him as a Test batsman above Graeme Wood or Andrew Hilditch.

 

[Penguinissimo]

The details are interesting, and bring back to mind things which had sort of faded into the mists of time and which even Cricinfo doesn't have the stats tools for me to look up in a few minutes.

I think the point can still be relevant, though - players can show certain skills in the county game, and just because they don't top the averages charts doesn't automatically mean they'll be a write off at Test level.

After all, topping the averages charts isn't exactly a guarantee of international success - examples of that from England alone are so numerous I don't even have to bother giving examples.

 

[Richard]

Success at county (or any domestic) level is far from a guarantee of success at international level.

But honestly, if someone is backing a player to succeed, properly, at international level who can't even succeed very well at county level, they're asking far too much for my liking. Yes, it will happen once in several blue-moons (Paul Collingwood, for example; or David Gower) but I'm quite happy if no-one ever guesses when it's going to and simply gives a debut to the players delivering the goods at county level when a place is available.

Go through successful Test cricketers and you'll find precious, precious few who didn't enjoy success at the domestic level.

 

[Furball]

Yeah and it would leave us needing another opener, which is a prob in itself. Although, I guess if Tres hadn't had his woes, Cook would've played most of his career at first drop.

Anyway, the boy's averaging over 42.5 from 48 tests and he's still not 25. I wouldn't be ditching him yet.

Not only that, but so far in his career only Australia have caused him any serious problems; he averages in excess of 47 against everyone else.

 

[Richard]

There's the danger of overall averages again. In Cook's career so far he's had serious problems against the bowling of:
Australia in 2006/07
India in 2007
Sri Lanka in 2007/08 (they dropped catches off him enough times to make this less apparent)
New Zealand in 2007/08
Australia in 2009

And that's being charitable - he's also had other periods where he's struggled with himself if not the bowling.

Cook's problems are slight, and should he be able to solve them he'll be a hell of a batsman. Here's hoping he might have already done so. But there have been a fair few occasions on which he's been found-out, and England's Test results have certainly been affected.