With England licking their wounds after a humiliating innings defeat at the hands of India's rampant Test team, the commentators and pundits are turning their attention to the future of captain Alastair Cook. England got everything wrong in Mumbai - initially team selection but then their batting bowling and fielding was simply nowhere near good enough.
Cook has been captain for some time and questions are now being raised about his desire to continue in the role. Of course, he is a fine batsman and it would be hoped that he would continue to open the batting for a while yet, but the truth is that he never has been much of a captain. Cook shows little energy on the field of play, rather wondering about often with a puzzled look on his face. He has rarely, if ever, appeared to either have the ability or desire to make any effort to galvanise his players and has, instead, been happy to be led by them. Thinking back to the days of Mike Brearley, probably the best England captain of the last 50 years, Cook is, in comparison, immobile, dour and wholly lacking in charisma.
The problem is that there are no obvious successors to Brearley waiting in the wings. When Cook steps down, there's little chance of him being sacked, his replacement will almost certainly be Joe Root. He is, of course, a fine batsman but, at just 26, does he yet have the maturity needed to lead the England team ? Might giving him the added burden of captaincy blunt his worth as a batsman ? In his favour is the fact that he does seem slightly more animated than Cook and, until he's had a go, we won't know the answers. What we can't afford is another case of handing the captaincy to whoever is seen as the best batsman, simply for that reason. Far too often in the past this has been the approach, and it's rarely produced results.
We must also not forget that England's poor performances in India are not simply down to mistakes in selection or any shortcomings in the side's captaincy. Our batsman have failed to cope with India's bowlers and our bowlers have failed to contain India's batsmen. These failings indicate that there are serious issues to be addressed when it comes to developing our young players, though no one shows any signs of understanding what the problems are.
In short, our domestic games are played on flat, unresponsive pitches. Batsmen are rarely tested by the bowlers as wickets are consistent, with regular bounce and little turn; bowlers have little opportunity to exploit these wickets, so restrict themselves to a largely defensive mode of operation. Our counties have few spinners of real quality, but are replete with mediocre seamers. On wickets in countries such as India, we simply aren't equipped to cope.
What we need is a return to uncovered wickets and 3 day county games, meaningful penalties for failing to bowl overs at an acceptable rate and less, rather than more, limited overs matches. Our players need to be able to develop their skills in more challenging environments than is currently allowed by the structure of our domestic cricket.
Sadly, the chance of any of this happening is remote, if not non-existent. We will carry on as we are, and still get thrashed in the sub-Continent.
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