So Alastair Cook fancies the job of captaining England in Bangladesh should the England management decide to give Andrew Strauss a rest and not take him on this tour.
There are two ways of looking at this possible scenario for me, the first is that Alastair Cook is deluding himself, that after he most probably gets taken to the cleaners by South Africa’s bowlers over the winter tour and has yet another failure of a series against one of the major test playing nations, that in the event of this happening would he still be in the team come Bangladesh?
Then there is the second scenario, the one that says I’m deluding myself thinking for a minute that Cook will get dropped if he fails again and thus continuing his average (at best) run of the last two years.
When I first heard this idea I thought that Alastair Cook was being a bit presumptuous expecting to still be in the team after the South Africa series. But then I thought about the facts and reliased that I am the one being presumptuous and totally irrational thinking Cook might get dropped if he fails again.
After all the selectors decided against taking Joe Denly to South Africa in the test squad, virtually assuring Cook of his place in the team for the whole tour no matter what. Also the selectors not only don’t see Cook’s place in the test side as a problem, they now deem him good enough to be recalled to the One Day Squad as well.
I’m not for a minute suggesting that I think Alastair Cook should be permanently ousted from team England or that I don’t think he is good enough, because in the long run I think he will be a decent player for England, I just get sick of this attitude towards the test batsmen that they seem undropable.
There never appears to be any sign from the selectors that players places are under threat and that they need to pull their fingers out, this culture of comfort seems to have rubbed off on them with these latest comments suggesting that Cook apparently already thinks his place on the Bangladesh tour is assured.
I assume Cook was asked this by a journalist and just responded with a positive answer rather than raising the issue himself, however for a batsman who in my view is lucky to still be in the test team maybe he should of straight batted the question and should wait and see if the issues with his batting that he has apparently been working on with Graham Gooch have been resolved before he worries about being the future England captain.