Roger Alton Roger Alton

The crazy rush to run down Alastair Cook

England's captain isn't a great tactician – but he is a great man. His critics would do well to remember that

England captain Alastair Cook Photo: AFP/Getty 
issue 12 July 2014

A jaw-dropping moment on the front page of Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph the other day: ‘How to fix England’, read the  blurb, ‘by Kevin Pietersen’. Rather like ‘How To Stamp Out Diving, by Arjen Robben’; or ‘Take Vanity out of Football, by Cristiano Ronaldo’.   Pietersen joins a dressing room full of former international  captains — Shane Warne, Geoffrey Boycott, and Michael Vaughan — who these days devote their column inches to slagging off Alastair Cook in particular and most of the English Test team in general.

It’s worth having a look at the flavour of the Telegraph Four’s jottings. ‘Cook’s captaincy is the worst I have ever seen’ (Warne); ‘A masterclass in how to throw away a Test win’ (Boycott); ‘How not to captain a Test team’ (Boycs again); ‘Let’s hope Cook has not opted to be boring again’ (Warne); ‘A good captain would not have axed his best player’ (Warne on KP, of course); ‘Anderson and Broad are letting Cook down’ (Vaughan);  or ‘England captaincy eats away at you — sometimes you need outside help’ (Vaughan again.

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