Play As If You Have Nothing To Lose, Alastair

Play As If You Have Nothing To Lose, Alastair

- Peter Hayter

Only Alastair Cook will know for sure if his race is run. Kevin Pietersen says he thinks the desire has gone, others have already written off the career of the man who has played more Test matches (150), scored more Test runs (11,712) and made more Test centuries (31) than any other Englishman.

Graeme Swann says his ex-skipper needs a big score to convince himself to carry on and questions whether he has the hunger to do so. Scores of 2, 17, 37, 16, 7 and 14, a total of 83 at an average of 13.83 are not what his side needed either.

Mike Atherton reckons that, at 33 on Christmas Day, should he manage to drag himself out of this slump, Cook could go on as long as his mentor Graham Gooch who played his final Test, in Australia as it happens, at the end of the 1994-95 Ashes, aged 41.

And Michael Vaughan suggested: “Eventually he will decide that enough is enough and he can’t carry on but I don’t think that stage has come just yet.”

Cook himself has responded to those who doubt his motivation by stressing politely just how much playing for England still means to him and he has backed that up with extra practice in public and in private he simply would not have put himself through if he had lost the will to care.

But perhaps the most insightful assessment of the England opener’s psychological and technical wellbeing came in the immediate aftermath of the surrender of the Urn at the WACA last week, from Ricky Ponting, the former Aussie star whose views about captaincy and batting demand maximum respect.