The Autobiography

by Alastair Cook

  When I first faced them, in 2006, they played tough. A little like Stephen Hendry or Ronnie O’Sullivan in snooker, they occasionally won on reputation. I thought them fine; they chirped a bit, but never sought to bully me, as a new kid on the block. I won four out of seven series against them; we usually gave as good as we got. It was almost a badge of honour when Brad Haddin called us bad winners.

  Of course, they sledged when they got on top of you. That’s fine, providing it doesn’t degenerate into personal abuse. That doesn’t happen too often, though I once had a ding-dong with South African wicketkeeper Mark Boucher, who accused me of being a ‘silver spoon’, among other things, when we fell out over the position of the sightscreen.

  ‘Why don’t you just let the umpires umpire?’ I observed, with the brashness of youth. ‘Why don’t you just fucking bat?’ Boucher replied, before launching into a volley that would have made a docker blush. As he went on the attack, I learned an important lesson. To get involved in that sort of stuff you have to enjoy confrontation and be quick-witted. I was neither.

  If you chirped KP, it fired him up. Sometimes he needed indignation and aggression to get him going. When I came on to the international circuit, I heard plenty of tales about the supreme stupidity of goading Steve Waugh or Brian Lara. They tended to prove their point through weight of runs, rather than the acidity of their words.

  My job with Jimmy Anderson was to keep him operating on that edge, above nice but below horrible. If he was too friendly, he didn’t have that snap in his bowling. It was a sign he was not concentrating. If his head had gone, he was never going to be clinical enough to use his skills. I used to act as his barometer, fielding and shining the ball at mid-off. The idea was to get him in his red zone, where aggression was balanced by analysis. The number of wickets he took while in that perfect state of mind was remarkable; in later years he has found the knack of winding himself up without outside help, and of calming down when required. He has discovered his optimal level of performance.

  There is a lot of verbal testing of players, especially when they are fresh on the scene. You could take a gamble with David Warner by having a go at him. He would always want the last laugh, the last word, and that could distract him. But there was never any certainty that it wouldn’t backfire. I prefer the term ‘managing the situation’ to ‘sledging’.

  Sometimes, it is the hot spot of the game. It’s tense, the bowler and batsman are both ticking, and it flares up. I think it is brilliant, because it shows this is a game played by human beings. The phrase ‘don’t cross the line’ is a horrible expression, but it has a certain truth to it. I love watching sport, though, when there is an edge to it.

  That could be a full-blooded local derby in football, where tackles are engineered to be fractionally late and deceptively painful. As a rugby fan, I mourn the fact a forward can’t get his retaliation in first by delivering a sly punch. I don’t mind seeing a bit of anger and angst. It is all part of the mix, and there is no accounting for taste.

  It’s odd what gets people worked up. Jelly-beangate, at Trent Bridge in 2007, was weird. A mountain was made out of a molehill when Indian tail-ender Zaheer Khan walked in after the drinks break to find jelly beans in front of his stumps. He thought there were just two, which he swept away with a flourish and a good-natured laugh. In fact, he didn’t notice a third one, beige, in his footmarks.

  When he saw it, after the following delivery, he began waving his bat around as though it was a toothpick. He accused KP of throwing the sweet at him while he was batting, something that Kevin theatrically denied. My mugshot was on the back page of the Sun the next morning, along with those of Ian Bell and Matty Prior, those closest to the scene of the alleged crime.

  ‘Who did it?’ screamed the headline. I was at short leg and named in the Telegraph as ‘suspect number one’ in some sort of Agatha Christie parody. You couldn’t make it up. Now that the statute of limitations has expired, I can dob in Belly with a clear conscience. It’s always the quiet ones: he thought it would be a laugh to share some of the jelly beans we had eaten during the break in play.

  Shahid Afridi bit the ball repeatedly while captaining Pakistan against Australia in Perth. Bottle tops have been surreptitiously used to damage the ball for years. Michael Atherton, England’s answer to Alan Titchmarsh, was caught with dirt in his pocket. I have to say, though, it was a new one on me when Australian opener Cameron Bancroft tried to hide sandpaper down his trousers.

  While we’re on the subject of newspaper headlines, a former Aussie Rules player wrote an all-time classic in the Darwin newspaper, the Northern Territory News. It featured a full-length front-page photo of Bancroft staring balefully down the front of his pants, accompanied by the headline ‘Why I’ve Got Some Sticky Near My Dicky’. Apparently, an earlier version was ‘Balls on the Line’.

  When I first saw the reports, from the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town in March 2018, I knew they were in trouble. We were in New Zealand at the time and, as the story unravelled, the suspicions aroused during the preceding Ashes series in Australia seemed justified. They seemed to have got what was coming to them.

  Steve Smith took the responsibility as captain and was banned, along with Warner and Bancroft, after sponsors and politicians weighed in, but there seemed more to it than that. That series against us had a strange emotional intensity. When Nathan Lyon, a genuinely nice guy, spoke about being prepared to ‘headbutt the line’, it wasn’t healthy.

  Darren Lehmann, as coach, stood down in a tacit admission that the culture he had helped to create had soured. The Cape Town incident itself, in which TV pictures captured Bancroft hurriedly stuffing the yellow sandpaper down his pants, was comically inept. I suppose it shows what happens when you’re under pressure and don’t think clearly.

  Our suspicions had been aroused in Perth, when they managed to get the ball reversing an inordinate amount when the outfield was still wet, following three hours’ rain. When the series was complete, and we had lost 4–0, the teams shared a beer in the dressing rooms at the SCG. Warner, a couple of beers into his celebration at the time, mentioned to a group of England players that he had used substances attached to the strapping on his hand to accelerate the deterioration of the ball during a first-class match.

  I looked at Steve Smith, who shot a glance that said, ‘Ooh, you shouldn’t have said that,’ but I’m the type to let bygones be bygones. I felt for Smith when he was booed early in the 2019 tour of England, in which the Ashes was the main course after the World Cup hors d’oeuvre. He, and the other two, had accepted their punishment, served their time and deserved a clean slate.

  Have there been times on the field when I’ve thought ‘you cheating bastards’? Of course, but you simply get on with the game. That’s how it is, how it was, and how it will probably always be in professional sport. People push the laws, and their luck, to the limit.

  15. Passing the Torch

  Joe Root might look like a cherub, fresh-faced and innocent, but appearances can be deceptive. He left an indelible impression on me, in more ways than one, when he made his Yorkshire debut, against Essex, in a meaningless forty-over match at Headingley on the last day of the 2009 season.

  We were a little hungover, after celebrating promotion from Division Two, but this small blond-haired kid cut through the fog. He later admitted to being ‘petrified’, and initially struggled to hit the ball off the square, but scored 63, as an opener, in a manner that suggested we had stumbled across a serious talent.

  The great ones announce themselves. They make you sit up and take notice. The crispness of his ball striking, once he found his rhythm, made the same impact, in a completely different way, as the first time I saw Jos Buttler in a one-day innings. Joe’s black county kit looked loose, a little too big for him, but he had a presence, an authenticity. He had obviously been coached well; his technique was assured for a teenager. There was a correctness and precision about his batting. His style was reminisce
nt of Michael Vaughan, another England captain produced by the same club, Sheffield Collegiate. They followed the same pathway from Yorkshire Boys, and even used the same brand of bat and boots.

  Joe also had the hard heart of a pro. He caught me at mid-off, dropped the ball, and still claimed it. I wasn’t particularly bothered about being given out, because there was nothing on the game. He eventually confessed, much to his embarrassment, nine years later, in the dressing room at the Oval at the end of my final Test. I naturally gave him grief, but had to admit I had no idea of what he had done. The catch was a sitter; he might have had to dive for it, but when it slipped, he just scooped it off the ground. It was cheeky, but showed strength of mind, and confidence beyond his years. He was only sixteen, remember. A more seasoned pro would have probably obeyed convention, said, ‘I dropped that,’ and thrown it in, but Rooty showed the sort of spikiness I quickly recognized in Jimmy Anderson.

  He was a winner.

  Our paths crossed occasionally before he was picked for his first senior tour, in India in 2012. He was obviously very comfortable in an elite environment. He wasn’t a gym junkie, had a little bit of puppy fat, which he has yet to lose, but he looked like he belonged.

  International cricket didn’t faze him. He wasn’t scared by the challenge. He waited patiently for his chance and looked ready to play when we picked him for the final Test at Nagpur. Batting at six, as opposed to his normal position as opener, his 73 in our first-innings 330 made him joint top-scorer with Kevin Pietersen.

  First tours are usually dangerous affairs, because they represent a step into the unknown, but the way Rooty walked to the middle, a massive smile shining out from under the England cap that had been presented by Paul Collingwood, was reassuring. The bloke could play spin, having perfected his technique with the Lions in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and he relaxed into the moment. He’s now at the stage of his career where perspective is possible. To me, he is the most complete English batsman I’ve seen. More intriguingly, I wonder if, in different circumstances, he could have made KP an even better player.

  Rooty has proved it is possible to average more than 50 in both Test and one-day cricket. His consistency of performance is phenomenal. The last time I saw his limited-over stats he was averaging 58 over the past four years, with a strike rate in excess of 90. He is almost redefining the boundaries of the modern game, in tandem with Jos Buttler.

  Kevin set the same pioneering standard in terms of power and improvisation but had his moments when his form dipped slightly. Rooty can’t match the magical nature of some of his innings but has huge impact on a regular basis. I suspect KP would have responded to the metronomic brilliance of the younger man’s batting; they could have formed a devastating partnership for England.

  Realistically, though, international teams are in a constant state of transition. Ian Bell called, just after 9 p.m. on the night before we collected the Ashes at the Oval in 2015 and asked for a chat over a beer in the bar. I was surprised by the timing of the request, but Belly had, in his understated way, struggled in that series. I had seen signs of internal turmoil and was planning to speak to him after the celebrations in any case. The biggest giveaway involved him making a conscious change to his daily routine, by getting to the ground ridiculously early. That hinted at a deeper sense of unease, because he was a quiet guy who internalized things. If Belly needed help in any way, I would be there for him. He had been one of the pillars of my captaincy, a selfless individual, who had put his heart and soul into the game. He simply delivered.

  We spoke for an hour that evening, starting with small talk about his beloved Aston Villa before getting down to the nitty gritty. He told me he was thinking about retirement and valued my insight. I argued against making a snap decision. It wouldn’t be irreversible, but it would set in chain a series of events. ‘I don’t see a bloke who is ready to retire,’ I told him. ‘I see a bloke who is tired. I see a bloke who needs a break from international cricket. I don’t see a bloke who is gone.’

  His talent had been spotted early, and mined relentlessly, for nigh on sixteen years. Like many of us, he had dealt with his own insecurities while balancing a heavy workload and a growing family. That journey, through England’s Under-19s, A team and senior side, is a marathon, and it is not uncommon to hit the wall along the way. You get to know people pretty well as a captain, or at least you think you do. Belly spoke about having had his fill, but I sensed that, deep down, he suspected he wasn’t done with the game. As we sat together, chatting quietly, it became clear he didn’t want to be seen to be taking the easy option. He wasn’t keen on a sabbatical, because it is a big thing to give away your place without the finality of retirement. He agreed he should carry on.

  That three-Test trip, against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates in October and November, didn’t break him, but it justified his unease. It was fiendishly hot, a grind, and I felt compelled to administer a rare bollocking to the entire group, when I sensed standards slipping. This wasn’t international cricket as grand theatre, on the big stage. It was hard yakka in near-empty grounds.

  I shared a partnership of 165 with Belly in the first Test, during my 836-minute trudge to 263 in the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi. He contributed 63 and had two more scores in the forties as we lost a series we really should have drawn, but when I looked in his eyes towards the end, I knew he was struggling.

  The tank was empty. He was running on fumes. I should have pushed for him to take a measured break, when given the chance, because when the game hits you, it hits you hard. I hated that his Test career should end with a six-ball 0, but when we convened the selection meeting for the subsequent tour against South Africa, from mid-December, I argued that we should not take him. That stance wasn’t taken lightly, because it had ramifications beyond the numbers. Any team sacrificing a player with 118 caps and 7,727 Test runs is taking a calculated gamble. Discarding such accumulated wisdom was doubly difficult, since it involved someone for whom I had the greatest respect, as a player and person.

  As is sometimes the way of things, I tried, and failed, to get through to him on the phone to explain his omission before it became public knowledge. He was obviously the most conspicuous of the five changes we made after that Pakistan series. When we did speak, he was hurt, and disappointed. He told the press he was ‘absolutely gutted’.

  He hasn’t lost his love of cricket. He is far from finished with the game. He will use his experiences, good and bad, to inform his coaching. I appreciate this is no consolation for the way things played out, but the episode made me consider how I would wish to depart when the time came. It was the start of the thought process that ended with that apologetic return to the dressing room at the Oval in 2018.

  The immediate challenge was daunting, but not without encouragement. South Africa were a fabulous team, regarded as the best in the world at the time, but showing signs of wear and tear. They had lost three of their four previous Tests going into the series, and were being hunted down in the rankings by India.

  Of all the teams we compete against, the South Africans are probably the most similar in terms of temperament. Their ethos is to play cricket hard and have a beer at the end of the game. When we clashed, we did so because we had so much in common. To coin one of Stuart Broad’s favourite phrases, this series would be one to look back on, over a bottle of red, in ten years’ time. I had never beaten them but had come to admire them as opponents, and men, as eras shifted. I took a few lumps facing Graeme Smith’s team, which featured the likes of Jacques Kallis, my mate Mark Boucher, Makhaya Ntini, Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander. Shaun Pollock has an awesome record in both forms of the game, as bowler and catcher, yet is one of the most underrated modern cricketers.

  Morne Morkel, a really nice guy, caused me a lot of grief down the years. He was probably at his peak as a bowler when he retired from international cricket in the spring of 2018. Tall and quick without being an absolute rocket, his natural shape, angling it
in, was awkward for left-handers. He had tended to bowl half a yard too short, but once he picked up the knack of finding the perfect length for challenging the top of the off stumps, he was hard, hard work.

  Graeme Smith assumed the captaincy early in his career, at the age of twenty-two, and played with edge and acceptable arrogance until his retirement in 2014. He failed to walk when Ryan Sidebottom claimed for caught behind, following Smith’s huge drive in the fourth Test at the Wanderers in January 2010. There was an obvious noise; if that happens when the batsman is playing well away from his body, he has almost certainly hit it.

  On-field umpire Tony Hill disagreed. Since we were playing without the Hotspot technical aid, and operating an early version of DRS, Andrew Strauss immediately referred it to Daryl Harper, the third umpire, who upheld the decision. Smith, unbeaten on 15, went on to make 105. South Africa won the match by an innings and squared the series. We were convinced Harper’s monitor hadn’t had the sound turned on.

  When we flew home the following evening the British Airways pilot, a member of the Barmy Army, woke us as we were preparing for descent into London. After the usual preamble, hoping we had enjoyed the overnight flight, he added, ‘You’ll be pleased to know that Daryl Harper’s ejector seat worked perfectly over the equator.’ Predawn laughter echoed down the plane.

  Seven months later, after an investigation into three complaints by the ECB, Harper was cleared by the ICC of failing ‘to make proper use of new technology’. The sound feed provided by the host broadcaster SABC was deemed to have failed. In other words, a minion hadn’t put the plug in. Smithy was laughing all the way to the run bank.