The Trent Bridge Test has for the last five years become a fixture in the calendar. It has also meant that my dad doesn’t have to put any thought into buying me a Christmas present. As per last year, I decided to make a week of it. Day 1 eating pork pie with my dad, Day 2 drinking with my pals. Squeeze in a stage of the Tour de France and the World Cup semi-finals, and it was always going to be a busy week.
Monday
I’ve written before of my ambivalence towards racing of any kind, but the Tour de France, with its races within races, its team dynamics, and sheer scale, is an exception – at least theoretically, because I can’t say I follow it religiously. Given that the third stage was starting in my home town, however, ignoring it would have been churlish. My friend Donna had even booked a table at the front of All Bar One.
I was prepared to be underwhelmed. They wouldn’t be racing down Regent Street, but it would still be over in a flash. I hadn’t imagined, however, that it would be so eerily quiet. To be fair, it is difficult to clap while operating the camera on your smart phone, but it was odd that the preceding police motorbikes got a better reception than the cyclists. Having said that, it was another reminder of the power of sport to unite people and bring them together for an all-too-rare shared experience.
Tuesday
If watching the Tour de France had been a touch surreal, then the first World Cup semi-final continued the trend. I had little doubt that Germany would win, that Brazil, missing Neymar and Thiago Silva, had run their race, but 5-0 after half an hour? In a World Cup semi-final? In the Maracana? It wasn’t just a victory for Germany, it was also a win for football. The kind of football that Brazil were – were – famous for. The kind of football that Colombia couldn’t and were not allowed to play against Brazil. That quarter-final had marked the end of any feeling that the tournament would benefit from the hosts staying in it. Crying, praying, luck, lenient refereeing, tag-team fouling, and home advantage could only take a team so far. But 7-1. Wow.
Wednesday
Not so many breathtaking moments at Trent Bridge. Sure, the first view from our front centre seats on the middle deck of the Radcliffe Road End was one. It’s easy to see how my dad could spend so much of his retirement sat up there. Ian Bell’s diving catch at a funky short mid-on was also pretty spectacular, but after that? Not much, bar the quality and quantity of pork pie.
That’s not to say that the first day of a Test series isn’t fascinatingly absorbing. For all the talk of the lack of life in the pitch, it was a chance to scrutinise the much-criticised captaincy of Alastair Cook. It’s easy to captain when the ball is doing something, but it soon became apparent that the ball would be slowly doing nothing on this wicket. To his credit, Cook realised pretty early on that nothing would go to slip, and if it did it wouldn’t carry, and went looking for other ways to force the game. It was interesting, too, to see some very obvious support for the captain amongst the senior players. Bell, for so long giving the impression of diffidence, was now part of the brains trust – as he should be, having played Test cricket for a decade.
On a thankless day, no fingers could be pointed at Cook’s captaincy. If body language is anything, Cook didn’t look to be overly weighed down by the pressure that has been mounting this year. Jimmy Anderson never gives the impression of particularly enjoying the labour of bowling, but was he looking more dog-tired and down on his luck than usual? My friend Raoul, no stranger to the concept of fatigue on the back of a week of nights, likened Anderson to Boxer from Animal Farm. It is great for Test cricket that this is a five match series, but to shoehorn five Tests in seven weeks is not fair on the players. If the pitches are all as lifeless as at Trent Bridge, the likes of Anderson and Stuart Broad, already hampered by a dodgy knee, will not be too far from the glue factory by the end of the summer.
For all the sympathy for the thankless task of bowling on a dead pitch, it is often overlooked that batting in such conditions is also by no means easy. Easy to survive, yes, but difficult to score with any fluency. That MS Dhoni had to resort to skipping out of his crease was instructive, as was the fact that even this great attacking batsman couldn’t really force the pace of the game.
As the euphemism goes, it was a day for the connoisseur. As was, later that evening, the second World Cup semi-final. Lionel Messi and Arjen Robben were as neutered as Anderson and Dhoni. They couldn’t blame the pitch, rather some excellent defending from the likes of Javier Mascherano and Ron Vlaar. “Concrete” Ron is one of a number of outstanding nicknames to have emerged from this World Cup, and I can’t help feeling that, along with everything else, this is another area in which England are lagging behind. Where the Dutch are coached by “The Iron Tulip” and Mexico by “The Flea”, England have Roy Hodgson. Roy “The Owl” Hodgson? And Stevie G, Jags and Wazza don’t have a patch on “Concrete” Ron and Xherdan “Kraftwurfel” (Power Cube) Shaqiri, and perhaps this is symptomatic of a lack of imagination throughout English football.
Thursday
The forecast for Thursday had been about as uncertain as Cook’s footwork of late, but it turned out to be another scorcher. Would the sun be shining on the beleaguered England captain…?
A year ago I had witnessed Ashton Agar’s dream debut, when he and Philip Hughes racked up that record-breaking tenth wicket partnership. Clearly, tail-end batting has improved beyond recognition in the last ten years, but England’s inability to polish off the tail has become a nasty habit. Mitchell Johnson showed in the winter the value of being able to blow away the tail, and, while Cook doesn’t have anyone with that kind of express pace to toss the ball to, it is inevitable that his captaincy should come into question – as it did in similar circumstances against Sri Lanka. Here, as Bhuveneshwar Kumar and Mohamad Shami, India’s 9 and 11, eased to half-centuries, Cook had the pitch to offer as an excuse, and to a degree a captain is only as good as his bowlers, but I can’t help feeling that being an opener isn’t ideal in this situation. It’s lose-lose for Cook. Captaincy suffers when thoughts might drift to batting, and batting suffers after the stresses of finishing off an innings.
It was all-too inevitable when Cook fell early on in England’s reply. That it was a slightly freakish dismissal only added to the sense that Cook can do no right at the moment, that there appears no end to his exploration of all the ways of getting out. I sense there is a lot of goodwill for Cook, but something has to give. I really hope it is in the shape of a century, but if he continues to struggle then his position in the team has to come into question. I am less concerned with his captaincy than his form with the bat. That’s not to say I am convinced that he will ever be a great captain, but it is too early to judge. This Test, in my eyes, is only his third game in charge of this team. Of his team. In personnel and strategy, the team Cook inherited was still Andrew Strauss’ and, perhaps more pertinently, Andy Flower’s. Cook’s run of poor form, however, stretches further back into the previous era, and this is where his place in the side has to come into question.
What are the options? Take away the captaincy? Drop him? Both? It’s fast becoming an issue where carrying on regardless holds no logic. But who would take over as captain? Matt Prior? Might not be around for too much longer. Stuart Broad? Fitness question marks with him, too. Bell? Joe Root? Who knows? And who would open? Michael Carberry? My preference would be for Alex Hales, who I have an inkling could be a modern-day Marcus Trescothick at the top of the order. England have lacked an imposing opening batsman since Trescothick retired, while other countries have benefitted from the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Chris Gayle and David Warner climbing into opening bowlers.
If only it were simply a question of form. There is also the political element, the ECB having very publicly backed Cook in the fall-out from the Ashes. As my friend Andy said, “there are a lot of ECB eggs in Cook’s basket.” It might be enough that the potential for Piers Morgan to crow is enough to prevent the ECB from stripping Cook of the captaincy.
Foolish pride, and a lack of alternatives – the reasons for inaction are hardly persuasive.
And what about Cook himself? How much the captaincy is affecting his batting – and his batting is affecting his captaincy – only Cook knows. He strikes me as being a particularly proud and stubborn character, so who knows if he would ever step down. At 29, and with an outstanding record, Cook is young enough and good enough to come out of this trot – as he did so spectacularly in 2010. Whether he believes he can, who knows? The biggest question is how best to get back in form, and it’s hard to believe that the answer is to carry on regardless. Form is hard enough to recapture without the pressures of international cricket and captaincy. Would giving up the captaincy free up Cook the batsman? Would playing away from the spotlight help? Taking a complete break from the game? I suspect we will know the answers by the end of the series. If not before.