Alastair Cook Sweats Blood for England but Misses out on Deserved Ton
Alastair Cook fell four runs short of his first Ashes century since 2011 on Day 3 of Lord's Test on Friday.
- Mike Selvey
- Updated: July 19, 2015 01:42 pm IST
Even in the hermetic confines of the space-age media centre the groan from the crowd was audible. Twenty minutes before the tea interval Alastair Cook, four runs adrift of what would have been his 28th Test hundred, and his first against Australia in his home country, had dragged an innocuous delivery from the all-rounder Mitchell Marsh on to his leg stump. (Warner, Rogers stretch Aussie lead at Lord's)
Perhaps, in what is after all only a fleeting fraction of a second, the England captain had seen the glory shot, where for almost six hours of unwavering concentration he had eschewed anything of such frivolity, as if he could already see himself in his mind's eye raising his bat and helmet in that familiar way and drinking in the applause. (Smith, Bradman in same club)
The ball was lengthish and had width, there to be ignored. But Cook drove vigorously and loosely and paid the price for a moment's lapse.
The Australians celebrated, as well they might, for Cook is once more the wall they have to breach, the fellow who had batted defiantly while those around him had succumbed.
© AFP
Cook remained rooted to the crease, head slumped, before dragging himself away, swishing the ground with his bat, as if knocking dandelion seeds into the air on the farm. The crowd, though, rose and applauded him all the way into the pavilion, for the skipper, in as much as he ever sweats, had done so in blood.
The renaissance of Cook, since his lengthy affair with one-day international cricket came to an abrupt end before the previous World Cup , is complete.
The time away from the game, while England stumbled their way through the competition, was well spent, in a complete reassessment of his game, and a reacquaintance with those qualities that have made him the most prolific Test batsman of his age the game has ever seen.
Some of the finest batsmen become so because they choose to rationalise their game, pare it down to a minimum that will suffice. Cook has never had this luxury, but happenstance has dictated that those shots he does have - for the most part a square cut, a clip through midwicket, a pull, bread-and-butter legside work, and a sort of push into the offside - are in fact all he has ever needed. Only when he has tried to become something he is not has he stumbled.
Fundamental to his rehabilitation was the rediscovered ability to leave the ball outside off stump for over after over, hour upon hour, rather than go chasing it as the imperative of white-ball cricket demands.
Added to this has been an adjustment of simple geometry, so that he no longer closes his shoulders off to the bowler (as had become a habit, forcing him to hit around his front pad) with the realignment made each time the angle of attack altered.
Sometimes the simple things make all the difference. He is in the middle of his seventh Test since returning to international cricket for the West Indies tour , and in that time he has scored 705 runs at an average of 58.75, 12 higher than that for his career, with two hundreds and five half-centuries.
So while the spotlight has been on the impetus and youthful zest provided by Joe Root and Ben Stokes, Cook has been quietly underpinning the innings.
This was as hard as Cook has ever had to battle. His survival of the new ball in the last hour of Friday's play, after spending the best part of two days in the field, running the show, was gritty, determined and faultless even as his upper order was collapsing around him against the Australian pace trio.
So although the innings had been severely damaged, the new day, cloudless and warm, promised runs against a ball that had already lost its conker-hardness and mahogany shine. A belting pitch, sun, Saturday at Lord's against Australia: what finer stage is there in cricket?
Cook made his mark early on by pulling Josh Hazlewood square to the boundary and, while it was his partner Stokes who caught the eye, the captain ticked the scoreboard over unobtrusively, reaching his half-century with a clip through midwicket. Cook acknowledged briefly and then went back to his routine of stroke, scratch mark, walk towards square leg to gather his thoughts for the next ball.
Shortly before lunch, a nasty Mitchell Johnson bouncer caught him on the unprotected point of his right elbow, demanding treatment on the field, and for a moment,as he flexed his fingers, it appeared that he might not be able to carry on.
He had made 63 when there came the single blemish on an innings of great diligence. With Johnson bowling, Michael Clarke had posted two men catching on the leg side, some 10 yards from the bat, one dead square and the other backward of that, both designed to catch the clip off his legs that might come with Johnson's angle and the additional help of the Lord's slope.
Johnson dropped short, though, and Cook pulled, firmly from the middle of the bat, straight at Steve Smith, the finer of the two fielders, who despite the ball hitting him in the midriff, could not cling on to this most ferocious of chances.
It seemed to free Cook. Mitchell Starc was on-driven firmly, and clipped through extra cover, Johnson was square cut violently and suddenly he was in the 90s. On to 96 with a firm clip off his legs and the expectation of the crowd. Then came the rush of blood, the glimpse into a future that never came. It was his highest score in 22 attempts against Australia in this country but it was not enough to satisfy.
Four times he has passed 100 at Lord's, including his previous innings, but only five England captains - Chapman, Hammond, Hutton, Gower and Strauss - have managed it against the arch-enemy. It was tantalisingly within Cook's grasp to join them.