Australian ghosts haunt Cook

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It may have taken six months for the impact of the blows to send him to the canvas, but if – as a growing number of England’s scornful cricket community are predicting – Alastair Cook falls on his pen knife, Australia can justifiably claim to have landed the knockout punch.

In the wake of England’s lamentable Ashes campaign last summer, a major overhaul was conducted to provide the much-liked and highly-respected skipper with the personnel and the planning that would supposedly provide him with the team he wanted to carry forward.

The reportedly divisive presence of England’s best-performed batsman, Kevin Pietersen, was done away with.

Team director Andy Flower was similarly removed, as was Cook’s long-time mentor and England batting coach Graham Gooch.

Veteran spinner Graeme Swann took redundancy midway through the Ashes, Jonathan Trott remains absent through illness and the decision to dump wicketkeeper Matt Prior has been reversed to the point that his initial replacement, Jonny Bairstow, is no longer in the national Test squad.

But the hopes of Cook, and those of his increasingly impatient kin folk that the reshaping of the England XI and the arrival of a far-less threatening opponent (seventh-ranked Test nation Sri Lanka) than Australia would herald a new dawn have proved worse than illusory.

Indeed, the frailties in temperament and technique exposed by Michael Clarke, Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, David Warner and others during the Ashes summer only seem to have become more serious half a year later and half a world away.

And nobody, it would now appear painfully obvious, carries more scars from that five-nil whitewash in Australia than Cook.

The man who arrived here last October as one of England’s trump cards given his bountiful Ashes campaign four years earlier left for home earlier this year under siege and seemingly overwhelmed.

It is more than a year (May 2013 against New Zealand) since the left-hander compiled a Test century and in the 12 Tests played since then he’s passed 50 in just five innings, with his best return being the 72 he scored in Perth last December (which was followed by a first-ball duck in the second innings).

That was the point, as Australia took hold of the Ashes for the first time in five years, that the confidence seemed to drain from Cook’s previously assured stroke play and the deficiencies that had been opened up in his technique began lurching towards the chronic.

Opposition teams know that by probing outside off stump and tempting him to off-drive – a stroke he has never seemed comfortable with – they can dry up his scoring and eventually frustrate him into surrendering his wicket.

His failure with the bat – just 170 runs at less than 20 per innings since that recent high-water mark in Perth – has only compounded his innate conservatism as a captain, and heightened his sensitivity to criticism that he needs to change his leadership style as well as his batting technique.

During a BBC radio interview prior to the current Test against Sri Lanka in Leeds, Cook lashed out at those who have gone public with their critiques and singled out former Australia leg spinner-turned-commentator Shane Warne, who has long taken issue with Cook’s negative tactics.

It has also been reported that Cook’s wife, Alice, became so upset with the ongoing social media targeting of her husband by people identified as supporters of the sacked Pietersen that she was reduced to tears.

There is no doubt captaincy presents a heavy burden, especially when a leader must confront his own form frailties as well as try to rally an under-performing team and placate disillusioned fans.

Andrew Strauss learned that in 2012 when a run of low scores led him to hand the captaincy over to Cook, and he acknowledged this week that the stress his successor is now facing carries a familiar air.

“It really distracted me that I had become the story,” Strauss said of the media scrutiny that led to him standing down.

“It did affect my captaincy and I lost a bit of confidence, because I felt I was letting the team down.

“No captain wants to be a passenger in the side. You want to show the team the way forward.

“When I became captain in 2009, I scored a lot of runs but towards the end, perhaps I didn’t have enough time to work on my batting as I was always thinking about the captaincy.”

With a Test series against India immediately following the current campaign against Sri Lanka – in which the tourists are firm favourites to secure an historic first series win in England – the decision on whether he continues as skipper might be taken from Cook’s hands.

But should that be the case, he may take some solace by observing the honour roll of those who have gone before him and had their captaincy aspirations, indeed their international careers, truncated by a remorseless Australia team that unashamedly targets their opposition leader.

Just ask West Indian Jimmy Adams, who began his Test career with a Bradman-esque average and finished with ignominy as the ill-fated tour he led to Australia in 2000-01 yielded him 151 runs from five Tests at an average of just over 18.

He never played Test cricket again.

Andrew Flintoff’s brief but disastrous stint as England skipper ended in the wake of the previous five-nil Ashes thrashing in 2006-07 when he averaged less than 30 with the bat and more than 40 with the ball, though he earned partial redemption as a player two years later in England.

And even India’s cricket deity Sachin Tendulkar was reduced to mere mortal status by Australia’s bowlers during his tenure as captain, with his return of 36 runs per innings as captain comparing starkly with his career average of 55 in all matches against Australia.

But perhaps the most relevant comparison is how Cook’s numbers stack up against recent England skippers in Ashes battles.

The two captains who have regained the urn for England – Strauss (in 2009) and Michael Vaughan (2005) – are also the only England skippers to have posted an Ashes century in the past decade.

If Cook was studying his comparative return as a captain in Ashes battles during his flight back to England last February it’s not difficult to comprehend why he might still be suffering from post-traumatic shock.

And it’s also easy to see how the predicament that unfolded in Australia last summer continues to haunt him on familiar turf against a less credentialed – but seemingly no less indecipherable – bowling attack.

England captains v Australia since 1990