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Teams have used any number of different approaches when trying to get Alastair Cook out in the last year. Pretty much all of them have failed. Of the 2,855 deliveries he’s faced in Test cricket since this time last year, 17 of them have got him out.
Today, India tried to get the better of him via pity. They dropped catches, bowled medium-pace, gave overthrows and looked dejected throughout the day.
“What d’ya make of that, Cooky?” they seemed to be saying. “Feeling guilty?”
Cook punched the ball into the legside and took another single.
Cook doesn’t care. It’s not his job to care. We can see him in 20 years time, playing cricket down the drive with his nine-year-old son. Cook’s batting.
His son gets bored after an hour and starts getting tetchy. Cook punches the ball into the legside and takes another single. A few hours later, his son’s crying and his wife’s pleading with him to go easy on the boy. Cook punches the ball into the legside and takes another single.
As a dad, he’s an arsehole. As an England opening batsman, he’s mint.
god forbid they ever go on holiday with the Trotts where there’s a tabletennis table
Trott showed more emotion.
https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/jonathan-trott-is-relentless/2011/05/29/
I’m glad he waited until his late 30s before having children. Helped him to retain his focus on cricket. No distractions.
Well, they had Rachael, their daughter, when they were both about 30 and they weren’t sure whether to have another. But Alastair always wanted a son – someone to play cricket with down the drive – and they thought: ‘Hey, you know what, late thirties isn’t old in this day and age. People are living until they’re 100, so if you look at it like that, why not?”
Following this post and that one on Trott’s traumatic table tennis, I’m rather worried about this liking you have for cricketers mistreating their children.
Cricketers are all too young nowadays. I guess Strauss is going to be the last ever England player older than me. And the last born in the 70s…
India clearly don’t want to be outdone by Pakistan.
Last year they gifted him a century as well. We all remember how that came up as well.
This a frigteningly accurate description of how my brother-in-law plays cricket with my 5 YEAR OLD NIECE.
Not really a propos of anything, but Praveen Kumar when bowling is a man’s man. But some of that fielding today was an insult to shambolicism.
What if Sreesanth cries?
Will that melt Cook?
I’m not comparing Cook to Geoffrey Boycott (heaven forbid), but in the latter’s exceedingly dull autobiography is a photo of the great man playing cricket in a Barnsley back yard. The caption is:
“Me, my brother and my mum playing cricket in our back yard at home. Naturally, I always bat.”
I always took those last four words to be a simple statement of fact, not an attempt at humour.
And Mrs Boycott come in at 3, with her trademark stick of Rhubarb.
Oh great lord (Sachin) forbid, if this continues, Sachin might have to threaten retirement & tell Cook that next time he sees the god, it would be in an IPL match & a few dozen tests & a handful of ODI’s!
Have mercy on the Indians Captain!!!!!
I’m sure I heard Cook say that he was having dinner around the Trott’s house the other day.
I’m sure King Cricket can give us some insight on that…
We can provide genuine, factual information, if that’s what you mean.
Cook and Strauss and no other players were invited round to the Trotts for a barbecue. Jimmy Anderson was mock-peeved and accused the bald gap-toothed blockatron of being a brown-noser.
Well KC – they’ve finally worked him out. All you have to do is find the main incoming power distribution board and switch it off. Then slip some dark glasses onto the umpires when they’re distracted, and hey presto – the end of Alastair Cook, and a drawn match to boot.
Remind me – how much money have they just spent on renovations to the ground?
Bugger though. Even this didn’t work. Apparently Cook found the switch and turned it back on again. And then someone pointed out to the umpires that it wasn’t and never had been in the slightest bit dark, and that they had a responsibility to the game of cricket and the paying public, and that they had made themselves look like stupid bureaucratic idiots in front of a large TV audience.
I’m not saying that Cook’s batting doesn’t take massive amounts of concentration but seriously at the moment I would rather watch Dravid or Kallis. What happened to him? His big scores came reasonably quickly against Australia, and their bowling attack is at least as good as this Indian teams, even when the crap Mitchell Johnson shows up.
Just check statsguru for the Ashes series and it seems he HAS always been this way. I guess without Trott there it’s more obvious this time.
Strauss should be telling him “play some bloody shots you boring bastard, or I’ll declare before you get to 300.”
I didn’t mind during the last Ashes series, because that was in Australia, in the middle of the night, and it was mostly Australians that were being bored to death. But this is just interminable.
294 is a nicer score than 300*. Less contrived. Feels more ‘genuine’. Cricket abhors round numbers.
sehwag surely loves round numbers
That comment deserves an “olé” or somesuch. We commend you.
possibly the dullest and most unimaginative person on the planet. good accumulator.
I will say I was all for Morgan for the test team when he wasn’t in it, now I think he’s not really right for it.
So one team is continuously and mercilessly pounding the other. Moving on to more important things……
Has the English press reacted to Ravi Shastri’s juvenile statements about how England are “jealous” of India? Can the ICC probe such atrocious statements not at all founded in truth? And can we kick out Mr. Shastri for good citing this reason? And when he gets his ass thrown out, can we all join hands and yell, “He’s gone like a tracer bullet” and shed tears of joy?
what, you’re not? ha.
KC – love the extra ‘a’ in Rachael. That is all.
What extra ‘a’? She’s named after Rachael Heyhoe-Flint
Great innings by Cook, he is a proper old fashioned test batsman. All records will tumble with this lad.
I actually really enjoyed Cook’s innings. I don’t know, I just like watching accumulators grinding their opponents to dust, I guess. Indians play 20/20, Cook plays innings until 2020.