“I’m incredibly honoured and privileged to be leading these boys on to the world stage in 2015. This group of players have been together for a couple of years now and this has always been the dream.” These might be reassuring words for the British public with the World Cup approaching except that they were delivered not by Alastair Cook of England but by Preston Mommsen, who was confirmed on Monday as Scotland’s captain for the tournament.
No such undertaking has been received from the England camp.
It has long been anticipated that Cook will remain in charge and not much has happened in Sri Lanka to change that view – except that high-profile former captains from a variety of platforms keep demanding that Cook should stand down, even though it is the role of his employers to make that decision.
So the debate rumbles on without making much progress. The ECB wheeled out Ravi Bopara on Sunday and James Tredwell on Monday. Eventually they were asked about the captain. They said he is fine and that runs are bound to be around the corner.
Monday’s little rumble took place in the jungle. After a five-hour drive south from Colombo England took to the nets just before dusk in the surreal stadium built in the middle of nowhere 20 kilometres from Hambantota by the Sri Lanka president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who happens to hail from these parts. Some of us flew there and, if we had forgotten to leave the plane, would have ended up in Shanghai, which is the source of much of the finance for the redevelopment of this beautiful area of Sri Lanka.
It might provide an appropriate venue for “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here” – and there was a brief, wild – and incorrect – rumour that Cook might disappear to Australia for Phillip Hughes’ funeral rather than stay in the jungle. Instead all the England captain can hope for is that his detractors are required to eat nothing more unpalatable than their words after the match on Wednesday.
There is a strong cricketing argument for England changing their captain if he keeps failing with the bat in the ODI format and the same might apply to their vice-captain, Eoin Morgan, whose recent record is even worse. But this debate goes way beyond the cricketing argument. Given recent history, the ECB’s hierarchy is not going to bow to the demands of a Kevin Pietersen tweet. Nor is Cook. If all had been serenity for the past 12 months, then Cook might well have been replaced by now. But it has not. Therefore Pietersen’s tweets are bound to have the opposite effect to that which is desired by their author.
Another possible victim in this debate is the innocent Alex Hales; his talents have been trumpeted so vigorously that one might be forgiven for thinking that England have a cross between Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers lurking in the wings.
When Hales plays in this series – and he must get a game soon – he will be under undue pressure to perform minor miracles given all the plaudits he has received from giants of the game while he has not been in the team.
There are many reasons why Cook will be desperate to end his barren run here while overseeing an England victory, which is marginally more likely with the news that Mahela Jayawardene is missing the match for personal reasons. One of them is that it would make it easier for him to drop one or two of his colleagues to allow Hales – and James Taylor – a chance.
Captains are wary of dropping men whose recent record is not much different from their own. Hence Hambantota, welcoming England for the first time, is not quite the haven of tranquillity as advertised.
Forget the pelicans; there are still some vultures as well, circling from afar. And Cook, despite all the reassurances, may not be feeling so upbeat as Mommsen when viewing the next few months. This pair may well be swapping notes in Sydney in the second week of February after it was announced on Monday that both England and Scotland will play warm-ups there. Before the World Cup starts in Australia and New Zealand, Scotland play Ireland and West Indies while England face Pakistan and West Indies.
