Test cricket is a test of patience and the more you play waiting game one can succeed more at the International level. And Alastair Cook could not undergo that pressure and that too as a captain and opening batsman. Cook’s retirement was expected as he was hinting that Joe Root is equally good as captain. England team is having a tradition of batsman leading the side and number of them were opening the innings for the team. From Mike Brearley we saw Nasser Hussein, Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan all led the side and quit at the right time as Cook did now. With his significant success as captain all over the world including the 2012 win in India Cook is a good captain at home and abroad as well. He mantled the captaincy and took the additional responsibility of opening the innings with different openers and manning the slip region with success. Cook quit captaincy from both one day and T-20 matches and concentrated on test cricket and scored 30 test hundreds. In the recent Indian tour also he fared reasonably well. In the 2012 tour, he made England toil at Ahmedabad with a laborious knock and followed it with heroic knocks till the final test at Nagpur to cling on to the 2-1 lead the team achieved. He started with a century against India at Nagpur and ended his career now with one at Rajkot. Even Steve Waugh could not win a test series in India, whereas Cook cooked India’s goose and now quit as captain before the selectors ask “why not quit ” Cook is indeed a great captain for all seasons and all conditions as well as he showed his class in Ashes as well as the series in South Africa.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
