By the end of their careers who do you think will be the better batsman? Cook or AB?

[Uppercut]

Not really the point though, it was a time when the role in cricket he was going to play hadn't even been decided. Howe was giving the impression of two batsmen with their own different peaks and troughs when the changes to AB's game around late '07 were obvious- apart from shoring up his technique, setting himself to play longer, more patient innings and confirming his batting position in the side, in the period before that, he hadn't even completely made up his mind that he wanted to be a batsman. If you're going to use that period at all to judge how good a player he is now, it should receive a very, very small weighting.

There's a difference between drifting in and out of form and improving.

 

[Jacknife]

What's not the point, I was merely correcting Cooks' average etc.
I think a point that can't be underestimated is, that Cook opens and AB comes in at 5, so it's quite hard to compare them because they do different jobs in there respective teams
The 2 players who can be compared, are Bell and AB and funnily enough, they have very similar records. In the last 2 years, Bell's averaged 69, with 6 tons. AB has averaged 62 with 3, very similar outputs.

 

[akilana]

bell vs michael clark is a good comparison

 

[smash84]

or Bell vs Mussey

 

[Burgey]

Allan Border. In all forms.

 

[zaremba]

plus one to the cult of price ews...

Yep, yer man PEWS has been in blistering form of late.

 

[GIMH]

BEFORE ANYONE JUMPS ON ME I KNOW NOBODY HAS SAID THE CONTRARY TO WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY, K ****ERS?

Worth considering that prior to his lean period Ashes 09-Pakistan 10, Cook was a fairly consistent gun for a good three years. I mean, I was on his back a bit in 08 for not converting enough (something Uppercut used to berate me for FTR, and as such his posts about how he thought he was underrated before are evidently justified) but never ever would I have considered the England side without him. His recent form is not a million miles from where I expected him to be after watching his first couple of years, so I don't think we should look at this as some flash in the pan. It's a player who clearly had potential, demonstrated it fairly often, and is now perhaps exceeding it.

I don't watch enough of Saffa's Tests to give a fair and unbiased opinion but then again that's not something I ever really do anyway. I think Cook has it in him to be the world's number one batsman (eighteen centuries aged 26 suggests records could tumble if he stays fit) in Tests. DeV is an animal though and I couldn't see Cook being as good as him in the short form.