Alastair Cook's form has tremendously improved after being sacked from ODI's.. However, the England test team are still losing lots of series.
There is a danger that by listening too intently to the braying of his detractors, English cricket will forget what it has got. Not just a batsman who saved, and then helped win, this Test, but also a captain whose leadership is in no way as woeful as it is made out to be.
Ever since Cook got sacked from ODI's, his form has improved. This is a fact. He averages 48.54 in tests now, and when he was in ODI's he had meagre averages in both ODI's and Tests(23.34 and 29.81 respectively). Maybe it is because he has been relieved of ODI captaincy. He can now focus way more on Test cricket, in Cook's words "the classic cricket". Many great cricketers have been evolving under Cook's captaincy, such as Joe Root and Ben Stokes. And not to forget that he has become a calm man. If you notice, he is watching the ball better, and his shots are more fluent. He made the record of England's leading run scorer in Tests after he was removed from ODI's. That should tell a lot about Cook to himself, that he is more of a test player. So it is vital that he stays in place for the Ashes this summer, and vital that the furies swirling around English cricket do not take a debilitating psychological toll on the man who is the glue holding this team together.
England’s deterioration as a Test team can be dated to the moment Cook began to struggle. After the India tour in 2011, Cook began to merge into the world of luxuries, and lose concentration on cricket. As a result, England's test team became chaotic, and the ODI team was even more. ECB did the right thing by sacking Cook. Although the ODI team is floundering now and then, they are set under the leadership of Eoin Morgan.
Yet if today was about the batsman, tomorrow was about the captain. As an opener he has no ochallenge in this country — but there are plenty who would excel his tactics in captaincy. He needs to watch out for those people, for his captaincy is hanging thinner than a stick. ALthough he has made amends in his form, the test team as a whole is still floundering, though less then before. This should be a wake up call for Cook, to rethink his strateies as well as approach the game differently. But he has no contention in the opener aspect because of his form, and if he just rethinks his captaincy method then there will be no stopping Alastair Cook.
