Alastair Cook opts for the end urinal

Dandy Dan writes:

I recently met Price for a few beers for the first time since my rather glorious night of drinking with the England cricket team. The glory has somewhat been tainted by the events in the winter, but hey ho.

Anyway, I obviously wanted to talk about it again. I said to him my only regret was not actually having a chat with Cook instead of just sharing a nod at the urinals. Price wanted to know why I didn’t even say hello. I told him that there was loud music in the toilet and that he had come in and gone to the end urinal.

This displeased Price. He is firmly of the view that the England cricket captain should have enough alpha-male confidence to stride into any toilet situation and take the urinal closest to the middle, not one at the end.

Now I’m not sure I agree with him 100 per cent, but I can certainly see where he is coming from. There have been a couple of moments recently where Alastair has not demonstrated ‘pissing in the middle urinal’ captaincy. For example, in the first Test, he should have said: ‘Sorry Gary, I know it’s a ton at Lords but I’m going to declare and have a few overs at them tonight’. But he didn’t. He didn’t piss in the middle urinal.

We’re certainly going to be looking for examples of pissing in the middle urinal captaincy for the rest of our lives, and examples of where it should have been applied too. If I ever have the chance to meet Mike Brearley, I’ll mention it to him. He might want to include it in a revised edition of The Art of Captaincy.