It is hard to find anyone who disagrees with the decision to sack Alastair Cook as England’s one-day captain – except perhaps the man himself – yet it still came as a major surprise. No doubt Paul Downton is surprised. After the sixth ODI in Sri Lanka the England and Wales Cricket Board’s managing director spoke at length, defending the ECB’s decision to stick with Cook and outlining his virtues after a difficult year. Last Monday he said he would be “very surprised” if Cook did not lead the World Cup squad and that he would give his opinion if required to do so in the selection meeting. On Saturday he had “complete confidence in the decision made by the selectors”.
James Whitaker, the chairman of selectors, must be surprised too, given his high praise of a “unique leader” before the Sri Lanka tour. And in a rational world England’s head coach, Peter Moores, must be taken aback since he said last Sunday that Cook was his man to the lead the squad to Australia. “I can’t be any clearer than that,” he said.
How to explain such a spectacular turnaround? Either Downton and Moores have changed their minds with astonishing rapidity or they must now be feeling disgruntled that their opinion suddenly counts for very little. It seems from the comments of Whitaker and Downton that the decision was unanimous, whereupon it had to be approved by the chairman of the ECB, Giles Clarke, which probably did not take very long.
So Downton and Moores are looking a bit daft and must be feeling a tad uncomfortable: U-turns are often justified – this one certainly is – but they diminish the drivers. In this instance Downton and Moores were almost in Italian Job territory, hovering hopelessly on the edge of a precipice before agreeing to turn around. From now on their press briefings will have to be taken with an extra pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, Cook says that he is “gutted”. He now deserves some respite. Cook has been badgered by the good, the great and the not-so-great to resign. There has been a chorus of England captains urging him to give up. Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain, Alec Stewart and Mike Atherton all resigned, but that happened after failed World Cup campaigns at a time when they would not have needed much persuading to go. It is a different matter to resign before a World Cup.
The onus was always on the England hierarchy rather than Cook to make the change. The best sportsmen are seldom objective about their own performances; by definition they have buckets of self-belief, which help them to prosper. Imagine all those captains being offered the chance to lead their country to the World Cup responding with a “Thanks awfully. But not sure I’m up to it”. There was no disgrace in Cook hanging on until he was told to go.
In the end it did not have anything to do with his captaincy: it boiled down to runs and the lack of them. Cook could no longer justify a place in the side and it was getting embarrassing. In Sri Lanka they understandably wanted to experiment and to do so it was necessary to drop batsmen. So there was Cook and Moores breaking the bad news to players who were performing better than the captain. Put the ball in the hand of a gentle Sri Lankan off-spinner and it was transformed into a hand grenade when Cook was on strike. If he survived the off-breaks, the edged cover drive was soon his undoing. In this era captains have to earn their keep.
Cook’s game was disintegrating in front of our eyes and it was painful to watch. Now he has the chance to restore it before leading the Test team to the Caribbean in April. Probably the best way to do that is not to touch a bat for at least a couple of months.
If the lack of runs was the key to Cook’s departure, there must have been a sharp intake of breath when the selectors decided who should replace him. Eoin Morgan’s recent record is even worse than Cook’s. In Sri Lanka he played one substantial innings of 62; in his other six knocks he contributed 28 runs. Only Alex Hales, who failed to trouble the scorers batting for the Hobart Hurricanes in the Big Bash on Saturday (unlike Kevin Pietersen who scored one in the Melbourne Stars’ reply), had a worse record on the tour. In 2014, Morgan has averaged 25 in 23 ODI matches; Cook managed an average of 27 in 20 games.
The clutched straw is that Morgan may well bat better when he is in charge – rather like Virat Kohli in the Test matches in Australia. In his eight matches as captain of England, Morgan averages 70 in ODI cricket. He was captain when hitting that 62 in Colombo two weeks ago.
Morgan is recognised as a potential match-winner, which was not the case with Cook, and given the timescale he was the obvious choice to take over. He has done it before. Provided he scores some runs – and he no longer has the luxury of Cook’s travails to hide his poor trot – he should be fine. Joe Root has enough to do shoring up the middle order. The selectors may also be comforted that Morgan is no threat to Cook’s leadership of the Test team. So might Cook.
The template for this World Cup seems to be the campaign in the Caribbean in 2010 when England won their solitary ICC trophy at the World T20. But the secret to England’s success then was that there was no template. At the last minute they threw Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb together to open the batting and thereafter they busked it by playing fearless, devil-may-care cricket.
It is trickier to do that in a tournament that lasts more than six weeks. Moreover, having gone to such great pains to move Ashes tours to allow meticulous preparations for the World Cup that England have never won, the ECB are more open to mockery than usual.
Yet there remains a consolation in the absurd format of this World Cup. It is possible to play badly for a month and qualify for the quarter-finals. Then somehow fluke two wins and the final awaits. That must be the plan.