That was a magnificent hundred from Alastair Cook. In fact, it was the type of hundred we used to expect from him on a regular basis. It’s as well as I’ve seen him play.
I believe it’s been crucial for his batting that he’s no longer part of the one-day set-up. His Test match slump coincided with his attempts to cement his place as a one-day opener, where the game at the top of the order is completely different.
You can’t just shoulder arms in 50-over cricket, so you train your brain to drive at the ball, or nurdle it down to third man. Those skills don’t come naturally to Cook, who’s more of a back-foot player. So it was as if he was transferring a bad habit to Test cricket, poking at balls that he should have left alone.Test attacks got used to tempting him into nicking it outside off stump. But since he was sacked as one-day captain at the end of last year, he’s been able to concentrate on five-day cricket — with impressive results.
Other than that change of mindset, he’s actually made only slight technical changes to his game. He looks less hunched now, which is a function of feeling more relaxed since he got the monkey off his back in Barbados.
And that has fed into the way he’s left the ball alone. We’ve all been there: when you’re out of nick, you go searching for runs. You play at balls you should ignore.
But what Cook did beautifully here was getting the bowlers to play to his strengths. By leaving the ball so well, he forced the New Zealanders to go straighter — and there are few better at working it off the hip than Alastair Cook.
This innings was also a reminder of how well he plays spin. I know the Kiwi off-spinner Mark Craig didn’t bowl very well, but Cook, Joe Root and Ben Stokes — who played absolutely superbly — wouldn’t let him settle.
No one should ever have doubted his batting ability. He’s a phenomenal player. But where things got a bit blurred with Cook’s role in the side has been his captaincy.
You wouldn’t claim his leadership skills are up there with his batting. He’s a decent captain — no more than that. He’s not a Brendon McCullum or a Michael Clarke, and he should never try to be.
Like Andrew Strauss before him, Cook likes to sit in there and force the opposition into errors. That’s just the way he is, and I can’t see him changing.
I think Strauss was right to rubber-stamp Cook as Test captain for the summer. Now was not the right time to bring in Joe Root, which is exactly what the Australians would have wanted. They’d have loved the chance to try to undermine a new captain, especially as he’s been doing so well with the bat. For now, the status quo looks like the right way to go, especially as Cook is scoring runs again.
The way Stokes batted against the second new ball was a reminder that the best way of changing the momentum of an innings is to take the attack to the opposition and make them doubt their plans. A bowling attack that had been so highly praised for pitching the ball up and showing such control had suddenly lost the plot. That was down to Stokes.
What I like about him is the way he came out in this innings after playing so well in the first. He was confident, but not reckless, which told me he didn’t simply feel he’d done enough with that 92 on Thursday. That’s a good sign.
I’ve watched him closely in this game, and every morning he’s made the long journey from the pavilion to the nets to work on his game. He strikes me as someone who has learned from last year, when his success in Australia was followed by a string of low scores. He’s not taking form for granted.
And, let’s be honest, he’s the kind of cricketer we’ve been crying out for. Even during the successful years, England could be a bit bland at times. There’s no danger of that with Stokes. Now English cricket just has to learn how to manage him. How well it does so could be absolutely vital to its future. – Daily Mail