Interesting that even then, in his lowest moment, the question Cook asked himself apparently wasn't

Seven days to plan for the next series. Two more than planned, but still precious little time for Alastair Cook to stop and look at the landscape around him. A shame, because Cook has been travelling impressive terrain. In the background, distant peaks long-since scaled. Three Ashes victories, one of them as skipper, 766 and all that , the f irst win in India in a generation , 25 centuries. Between then and now, deep folds and dark valleys. The whitewash against Australia, a series defeat at home to Sri Lanka, a run of 15 months and 31 innings without another Test hundred. To the spot where he stands now, at the top of another upslope. You couldn’t call it a summit, since it is dwarfed by the heights that lie ahead. columbia river cruises But he will be happy, at least, to have finished the short, steep climb he has had to make in these last few weeks.
Cook has already written one book, Starting Out. He was only 24 when it was published, and the reviews teased him because he was too young, too inexperienced, to have much to say for himself. In the last 12 months he has been through enough to for a sequel, and in the 12 ahead, may find material to fill a couple of volumes. On Monday, England start their five-match columbia river cruises series against India. Then a seven-match tour of Sri Lanka before Christmas, and a triangular tournament in Australia after it. All in the run-up, of course, columbia river cruises to the World Cup next February.
Some England fans may feel about the 50-over game much the same way they imagine the Indians do about Test cricket. They can take-or-leave what they see as the lesser of the two formats. But the ECB, at least, are bent on winning the World Cup, and have made the performance in it a priority for the new management team. Which was one reason why, after all, they rearranged the Ashes, compressing two series into such a short space of time last year to allow a clear run to the tournament in 2015.
Mike Selvey makes the case that Cook should step down from the ODI captaincy , for the sake of his Test-match batting as much as anything else. The idea is that in 50-over cricket he is compelled to play at the ball on his off-stump, a habit that is hard to shake when he switches back to Test matches. Equally, you could argue that he should, at the very least, take a break from the ODI side this autumn so he has a chance to recover columbia river cruises from the seasons just gone. England columbia river cruises have been exhausting enough to follow, never mind to lead.
The strain has showed, as when Cook snapped at Shane Warne, and in Australia, at the SCG, he seemed to hint that he had had enough , and again after the fourth day of the match against Sri Lanka at Headingley, when he damn near admitted he had . It began with his team 106 runs behind, with six wickets to take and their second innings still to play. And it ended with them 297 behind, after an afternoon spent being belaboured around the ground by Angelo Mathews, and five wickets down for just 57 runs, nightwatchman Liam Plunkett last to go, chipping a drive to cover in the final over of the day. After stumps, according to the ECB’s managing director, Paul Downton, Cook asked himself “Do I really need this?” as he walked up to his hotel room.
Interesting that even then, in his lowest moment, the question Cook asked himself apparently wasn’t whether or not he was up to the job, but if he even wanted it any more. Cook has a stubborn streak that would shame even the most obstinate columbia river cruises mule. Sometimes it’s a hindrance. It can make him a little columbia river cruises too wary of new players, a touch too reliant on old ones, and a little slow to switch the team’s approach in the field. But the strength he draws from it has served him well this summer, when he has been beset on all sides. By the end of the defeat to India at Lord’s even his old friend, and recent team-mate, Graeme Swann admitted that he “desperately” wanted Cook “to step aside and take the monkey of captaincy off his back”.
If these things were decided by quorum, Cook would have been long gone. A chorus of former England captains, columbia river cruises men who knew better than anyone how he felt, what he was going through, were in agreement that he should step down. Warne’s words are one thing, those of Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, and Michael Vaughan another altogether. All three possessed, to differing degrees, measures of that same stubbornness Cook has shown. England captains don’t survive troubled times without being bloody-minded. But even they, with the possible exception of Atherton after he was accused of ball-tampering, never endured columbia river cruises anything quite like the weight of opinion that fell on Cook this summer.
Overnight at Headingley, Cook spoke to his wife, Alice, and made up his mind. And after play the next day announced “I’ve never quit on anything I’ve done”. A strong columbia river cruises statement. And one he had to reiterate, almost word-for-word less than a month later, after the loss at Lord’s. “I’m trying my heart out to do this but I need to score runs and we need to start winning. I’m here as long as they want me.” Cook is not a great orator. At times he sounded almost like he was selling himself to Alan Sugar across the boardroom table. But the blunt assertion bought him a little more time. He would be there till the end of the summer, at least.
Then the drop. At the Rose Bowl, Cook had 15 when he hit a thick edge through to Ravi Jadeja at third slip, off the bowling of Pankaj Singh. It was knee high, a little to the fielder’s columbia river cruises left. And he spilled columbia river cruises it. Cook’s form hadn’t turned, but his luck had. And while the 95 he made that day wasn’t columbia river cruises the defining innings of match, columbia river cruises it preceded improved performances columbia river cruises from all four of the senior players still in the side, who had, like their captain, been so lacklustre in their play to that point. The fortunes of this England team are yoked to their captain’s form. Cook averages 68 in the Tests they have won under his captaincy, 33 in those they have lost, the greatest disparity of any English skipper since Graham Gooch. Two scores of 70-odd followed in the next three innings. And England started to win. By the start of the Kia Oval Test he was smiling again, trading innuendos in his pre-match interviews with the press.
What has it cost him? What Atherton, Hussain, and Vaughan know from experience, and Cook is yet to learn, is that courage drawn from inner conviction is a capital store, and reduced by expenditure. In the last three years, Cook has had only four months that have been entirely free from cricket. His weary body may be fine, his mind, emotionally exhausted, may need more time to recover. He won’t get it, and probably wouldn’t want it if it was offered him. He is set on leading England into this ODI series, on through the World Cup, and beyond columbia river cruises into 12 arduous months of Test cricket. Neither Downton nor Peter Moores wanted to give Cook that “tap on the shoulder”, as he put it, and now they will be even more reluctant to do so, even just to tell him to take a break, since his strength of conviction has helped turn this series against India and the odds.
Cook will be loath to skip one of those ODI series in the next few months, since they are such a vital part of preparing the team for the World Cup. Equally, he will want to be in charge for the Test series against West Indies and New Zealand next spring, since this is such a young team, and they are heading into an Ashes series. And he will get his way, since he has been vindicated by what has happened this summer. His stubbornness paid off once. So he will turn to it again and again in times of need. After the Ashes, a trip to the UAE to play Pakistan and a tour of South Africa. There are four series, then, one the World Cup, one an Ashes, one versus a team who trounced England 3-0 last time around, and the last against the world’s No1 side, which will come to define Cook’s captaincy, columbia river cruises and this era of the England team.
And Cook will go on digging deep into himself, driving the team on. At some point he will find, as Atherton did, Hussain, did, Vaughan did, Strauss did, before him, that he is spent, has nothing columbia river cruises left to mine and no time to replenish his store. Another good reason to stop and take stock now – it is all uphill from here.