Hi guys sorry no blog yesterday, got OFSTED in today and tomorrow so as you can imagine left little time for blogging. However only one more day of them and can not do any more planning so blogging time.
What a performance from England's Test captain Alistair Cook today his 23rd test hundred and now the leading hundred scorer for England. He also past 7000 test runs and is the youngest Englishmen in doing so. He has developed a technique and temperament that makes him well suited to batting at the highest level. He knows the areas he can score in and yet in his 86th test you can still see him learning and developing his shot play, such as adding the sweep into his game over this tour. It's a scary thought how good he could be in 5 years when he will only be 32 and have over 10,000 test runs to his name and 120 test caps. However what comes as the most surprising stat for me in what was a day of stats, is this is Cooks 5 test match as captain and this is his 5th century one in each test he has captained England in.
When Cook was announced as test captain following Strauss it did not come as a surprise to me but I did worry. It's always a worry when you make one of your better players captain, how will it affect their ability to do their primary job in Cooks case open the batting. Well Cook has answered this question and not just answered it he has left no one wondering. It almost appears to have helped his batting he thrives on the opportunity to lead from the front and take responsibility for scoring a good portion of England's runs.
Yet this is not unique to Cook, Australia have recently made Michael Clarke the captain of their test team and have also been repaid with buckets of runs. Clarke has had a phenomenal calendar year being the first man to score over 200 runs in 4 innings and over 1300 runs. This is easily Clarke's best year as a test match batsmen yet it is also his first year as captain.
This is quiet remarkable when we look back, it use to be a curse being named captain of your nation especially as a batsmen. Ganguly when he was first named Indian captain struggled to score runs and was moved all around the batting order to try and find some form. Other great players also struggled such as Lara and Atherton, hence this is where the worry came from when Cook was named as captain.
Cook and Clarke may not have broken the curse as I'm sure it will come to haunt future captains including captains of Australia and England. Cook and Clarke are just exceptions to the rule. They are both young and will go on to have record breaking careers and could end up the leading run scores of their nations respectively. What helped them have this success is they both had good captains to learn from, they are both young but very experienced players and their batting roles where settled within the team therefore if they were captain or not nothing needed to change.
Test nations and future test captains can learn from this model as it is with out doubt a model of success, but it also helps having some very talented young players.
No comments:
Post a Comment