The Autobiography

by Alastair Cook

  It was horrible. A couple more bad shots, a couple of good deliveries, and we were done. It seemed that no one in the team was good enough to stand up to them. The game was pretty much over before it had begun. We could talk around the issues by suggesting it was the result of a communication breakdown, but essentially, we had given their bowlers an unnecessarily easy day.

  They would have come into the match with the mindset of being prepared to endure ninety overs in the field, six and a half hours of hard work. Their main guys would have been steeling themselves to bowl twenty-five overs. That hurts, incrementally, as the day wears on. Our batsmen failed to do their basic collective job: to hang around long enough so that the opposition bowlers tire, and there is less pace on the ball. Get them into their fourth or fifth spells and take advantage.

  The lower order can do a lot of damage in that situation. I loved batting with Jimmy Anderson as a night watchman, because he was so diligent in his work, and visibly determined not to let me down. He listened to every word I said, which was a novelty. I didn’t bat that many times with Stuart Broad, but our partnership in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne in 2017 was a blast.

  We led by only 46, with two wickets left, when he arrived at the crease. He knew his role was to drive home our advantage by building a partnership, and he willingly wore a couple of short-pitched deliveries. My role was to keep him sane and remind him of certain realities. The problem is that whenever tail-enders play a couple of fantastic shots – in Broady’s case a pull through square leg and a sumptuous back-foot drive – they think they’re Don Bradman.

  Our plan was to make sure our lead grew incrementally, in batches of five runs. We worked on the theory that reaching a series of small targets leads to big gains. I managed to keep him in check, focused on the job in hand, so that we put on 100 in eighteen overs before Usman Khawaja was adjudged to have cleanly caught a top-edged pull off Pat Cummins. Broady made 56 from 63 balls and helped me to be 244 not out at the end of a day in which I passed Mahela Jayawardene, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Brian Lara in the all-time run list.

  Jimmy was out for 0 from the first ball he faced the following morning, and I carried my bat for the first time in Test cricket. Only two of my thirty-three Test centuries have been more substantial, 263 against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi in 2015, and 294 against India at Edgbaston in 2011. Funnily enough, the principle of that sort of achievement resonates across sports.

  The Saracens guys were fascinated by the underpinning philosophy of daddy hundreds when the Essex squad visited them, to share ideas and experiences. Their team meeting was based on the imposition and continuation of dominance, since they were in the process of becoming England’s best rugby team. Specifically, they wanted to pick my brains about the Ashes tour of 2010–11, when I scored a record 766 runs at an average of 127.66.

  Firstly, they had to understand its context. The unbeaten 235 in Brisbane, in the first Test, was my first double hundred. It had taken me nearly five years, and a lot of growing up, to learn how to make it. The highest score in my previous thirteen Test centuries had been 173, against Bangladesh in Chittagong the previous March.

  Opening the batting is a bit like walking in the Himalayas. The air is thin and you’re climbing constantly. It is easy to make mistakes through inexperience. When I first started playing, scoring a hundred was such a big thing. Once you reached three figures, you felt the weight of the achievement lift, and switched off a little. It was almost ‘job done’. It was a goal to be ticked off, rather like reaching the requisite level in a fitness test.

  It took longer to identify the importance of batting for longer periods. I had to learn to deal with the troublesome Gimp on my shoulder, whose negativity was making me expend too much mental energy. With him in his cage, I had more resources to devote to my batting. I began to realize that a big hundred, 160 or 170, provided greater insurance against the bad days, when I would be out cheaply to the new ball.

  The biggest opening partnership I had was 373, with Nick Browne against Middlesex at Chelmsford in June 2017. It fell just short of the overall Essex record of 403, set by Goochy and Paul Prichard for the second wicket in 1990. That was all my fault; Ollie Rayner had me caught at slip when I’d made 193. Nick went on to score 221, and, with Simon Harmer taking fourteen wickets, we won a rain-affected match by an innings with two minutes to spare.

  In psychological terms, I was colour-coded as a ‘cool blue’, a so-called introverted thinker. I was depicted as being very analytical and had to be aware of the danger of overthinking, when the tendency was to become too mechanistic in my batting. In another simple metaphor, used by Mark Bawden, England’s psychologist, I was characterized as an ‘assassin’. My strength was my ability to stay within my bubble and utilize repeatable skill.

  So, in tennis terms, I was Bjorn Borg. KP was John McEnroe, a ‘yellow’ and extroverted ‘feeler’. He had a ‘warrior’ mentality, emotional and aggressive. Players can switch between the modes, as in the case of a confrontational fast bowler like Stuart Broad having occasionally to think a batsman out, but the common denominator is the development of the ability to remain in the moment.

  Scoring a hundred is almost arbitrary. You play as well to get to 99 as you do to get to 101. It means little in the run of the game, but everything, psychologically and practically, to the batsman. In our enclosed, statistically driven world, you are judged on centuries, not near misses. I was once told no England player has scored more nineties, but to be honest, it is such an arcane record I haven’t bothered to check. It’s probably true, because I have played more games than anyone else.

  Would it change things? Obviously not, and that’s one of the stupid things about cricket. The only time I felt I messed up unforgivably in such circumstances was against Australia at Lord’s in 2015 when I attempted a big drive and played on to the leg stump, off the inside edge, to Mitch Marsh when I’d made 96. It was a schoolboy error, a submission to the situation.

  I was spewing about it because I allowed myself to be undone by the proximity of the second new ball. I wanted my century as insurance against a delivery with my name on it. If I had played the same way as I had for the previous six hours I would have achieved it, but I succumbed to outside influence rather than backing myself.

  It was a terrible mental mistake, at a critical juncture. You didn’t want to be inside my head in the endless seconds when I slumped forward on one knee in disbelief at what I had done and stared at the ground as if inviting it to swallow me whole. That was a long walk back, to sympathetic applause I didn’t merit. I had failed a basic test, in being controlled by the environment.

  Is it any wonder superstition is rife in cricket, when failure can be so infuriating? I’ve lost count of the number of times I have sat on a dressing-room chair and wasn’t allowed to move. If someone does so, and someone gets out, you’re like, ‘Urghh … what?’ It is almost a betrayal. Some people, including Trotty, Jimmy and Graeme Swann, used to just lie there.

  Swanny wouldn’t watch many balls live. He’d be on his back, in front of the TV. My kit used to be an organized mess, Trotty’s was immaculately laid out, like a still-life painting, but Swanny’s was a public health hazard. He had his lucky pink shorts, which were white until something leaked colour in the wash, and bowled in the same cycling shorts for days on end.

  The undercurrent of such eccentricity is the inherent seriousness of Test cricket. I spoke in the previous chapter of my opening partners. Some had a technical fault, exacerbated by a perceived inability to adapt under scrutiny. Did that mean they weren’t quite good enough at that stage in their careers, and should have been allowed to incubate in county cricket? Did they get a raw deal?

  It’s debatable. But one thing that cannot be challenged is the scorebook. When you strip away the extraneous stuff, the noise and the political posturing, if you are scoring a lot of runs you won’t be dropped. Some people who feel hard done by look for the excuse that they weren’t treated properly,
or given enough opportunity.

  Sorry, but if they had scored four centuries in their seven or eight matches, they would have played more. I realize that sounds dispassionate, callous even, but that is the harsh reality of professional sport. Produce with occasionally undue haste or repent at your leisure. The cut-throat nature of Test cricket is what makes it so hard, so intense, and ultimately so rewarding.

  There can be anomalies. James Taylor, for instance, spent a long time outside the England set-up because Andy Flower and the selectors came to a certain view on him. It was nothing personal and didn’t reflect badly on Andy, but it took a long time for them to be convinced James had the skillset required to progress from being a prolific county cricketer.

  A teenage prodigy at Leicestershire, some had deemed him too small, though he was taller than Sachin Tendulkar. In technical terms, he had a dominant bottom hand, which led to his working the ball across the line to the leg side with a twist of the wrist. At the highest level, this is seen as an exploitable flaw.

  Another coach, a different set of selectors, could have come to a contrasting decision, and trusted a natural talent. Conversely, James could have been promoted prematurely and been found out. Ultimately, after about three years on the fringe, he was given his chance, and excelled in seven Test matches before, at the age of twenty-six, fate intervened.

  He was forced to retire after being diagnosed with a serious but rare congenital heart condition known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), which can be fatal during vigorous exercise. He described the sensation of having his heart shocked back into a normal rhythm by an implanted defibrillator as like being hit by a ball delivered at 100 mph.

  He has since been appointed as a full-time independent England selector, so he will understand the onerous nature of the process. I’ve been in selection meetings, judging batsmen with as much objectivity as I can, when the sense of responsibility has been almost overpowering. Decisions are hard, sometimes horrible, and often final.

  It is sometimes easier to judge a bowler than a batsman; that’s why they seem to have fewer games in which to prove themselves. If they bowl thirty overs in each innings, across three or four Tests, you get a fair idea of the parameters of their potential. A batsman, in the same time frame, can get out unluckily to two or three very good deliveries. The temptation is always to offer another chance.

  Whether that’s deserved is open to judgement. As captain I’ve been in selection meetings where we’re not exactly ending a bloke’s career, but we are giving it a big old dent. I know what a struggling player is going through, the fears and frustrations he is trying to contain, because I have been there myself.

  6. In the Bush

  A condemned man is supposed to enjoy a hearty last meal, but my dinner seemed flavourless, a nutritional necessity rather than a source of pleasure. It had nothing to do with the food at the team hotel near Tower Bridge; the palate of a struggling batsman cannot be teased, even by a kitchen staffed with Michelin-starred chefs. He is desensitized, from his taste buds to his toes.

  It might almost have been a subconscious act of self-sabotage, but after the table had been cleared I sat there alone, flicking through a newspaper. Sure enough, I was being nailed as beyond my sell-by date. I had lasted only seven deliveries in the first innings of the third Test against Pakistan, and my time was assumed to be up.

  It was the evening of Thursday, 19 August 2010. I was 0 not out, England were 6 for the loss of Andrew Strauss in the second innings, and I would be walking out at the Oval with Jimmy Anderson on the third morning. Things were so bad Jimmy had sacked me as his unofficial batting buddy.

  As I headed for the lifts, I passed Mark Bawden, who was having a drink with a friend. Months later, he would tell me I looked as if I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. ‘You all right?’ he asked. Apparently, I smiled thinly. ‘Well, not really,’ was my deadpan response. ‘I’m about to go and play my last innings for England tomorrow.’

  With that, I walked off, mentally calculating the worthiness of my international career. I had scored twelve Test centuries to that point, not bad but no protection when you can’t buy a run in a long, hot and wet summer, where the ball moves more than usual. I was deep in the bush, my shorthand for being psychologically gone.

  I went back to my room and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling in my five-star cell. There, amidst a jumble of images, I acknowledged the magnitude of my mistake nine months earlier, when I’d modified my technique with the intention of enjoying long-term success against Australia. I changed my trigger movements and became very rigid.

  I have a lot of movement in my usual technique, with a double backlift. In layman’s terms, my hands start the trigger. My feet then move, my weight goes back, and I go back and across towards the stumps. My front leg floats, so that if the ball is short, I have the flexibility to push off it. If the ball is full, I can plant it.

  I had developed what I called the Jacques Kallis method, named after the South African all-rounder. Again, in basic terms, that involved pressing forward with my right foot first, before going back and across with my left. I had my bat tucked in very straight and waited for the ball to come. It worked initially. I scored 118 against South Africa in Durban on Boxing Day 2009, and made two centuries, 173 and 109 not out, in my first Test tour as captain, in Bangladesh.

  It wasn’t pretty, and the results were ugly. By the time I fell into a fitful sleep that Thursday night, I had decided to revert to my old technique. I would play naturally and aggressively. I would not die wondering. I would take quiet inspiration from Paul Collingwood, and his pugnacious innings at Trent Bridge.

  There is always one player under pressure for his place in an England batting line-up, and it was Colly’s turn in 2008. He had gone twenty-three innings without a Test century and hadn’t reached fifty in any form of cricket in that wet summer when he joined Kevin Pietersen at the crease. Michael Vaughan, sitting next to me on the balcony, murmured, ‘Fuck me, if Colly gets runs here it will be one of the great achievements.’

  Colly ran down the wicket to reach his hundred with a six and was last out for 135 following a brilliant fifth-wicket stand with KP, who succeeded Vaughan as captain in the aftermath of a series defeat clinched by Graeme Smith’s retaliatory unbeaten 154. He played forcefully, with the body shape and fluidity that so often signals new-found freedom.

  I took note of his resilience in producing the big innings when he needed it most. It chimed with another performance earlier that year, when Andrew Strauss was popularly assumed to be playing for his Test career in New Zealand. Distracted and struggling to sleep, he reached his lowest point in the first innings at Napier, when he batted at three and was caught in the gully, off debutant Tim Southee, for 0.

  He had dinner that evening with his wife Ruth and told her he was playing his last Test match. Ironically, in a delicate situation where offering advice to a teammate can feel intrusive, Colly provided unlikely impetus by telling him to concentrate on his natural game, the pull and cut shots. Straussy scored 177, set up a 121-run win and was England captain within a year.

  What did I have to lose? I reached the conclusion I would rather play a massive drive and nick off, than briefly delay an inevitable dismissal by defending obsessively. It was a good pitch, and I had been fortunate to survive an edge through the slips the previous evening. I resolved not to make what had become a familiar mistake, in failing to get forward, and being trapped on the crease. I hit the first ball of the day, outside off stump, through midwicket for four. The shackles were off.

  My footwork was sharper, my form more fluent. Though I edged a couple, I was 76 not out at lunch, and dominating what would be a partnership of 116 with Jonathan Trott. In an eerie foretaste of what was to come nine years later, I reached my century in bizarre fashion, when Mohammad Asif, the bowler, returned the ball over my head for four overthrows.

  That 110 was enough to secure my place on the subsequent Ashes
tour, where Bawds gave me a book called The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris, an exiled English psychologist and life coach whose CV includes stints as a stand-up comedian, sex therapist, filmmaker and novelist. It used the concept of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to introduce me to the Gimp, who had so often been sitting malevolently on my shoulder.

  I have a natural aversion to motivational mumbo-jumbo but this was a little different. I didn’t read more than twenty pages but it was enough to set me thinking. I realized self-doubt was a common thread, linking someone as externally resolute as me to a supposedly supreme example of self-confidence such as President Obama. Human beings are apparently hard wired to think negatively; it is a basic survival instinct.

  How, and why, could that be related to cricket? I mulled it over for a couple of days. Then it was off to a pub in Adelaide, to complete a conversation with Bawds that had started, very unsteadily, at the back of the team bus on the way to Potchefstroom for a warm-up match against South Africa A, a little less than a year earlier.

  I can say this now, because he is a trusted adviser who has my complete respect, but on that day he looked like a competition winner. Slightly overweight, glasses, a geek sent from central casting. No one had seen him before yet there he was, trying to negotiate the invisible minefield of seating arrangements on the bus. Everyone, coaches and players, has their own spot.

  Fortunately, we had taken only twelve players; I was twelfth man because of a back twinge and was at the back of the bus, to the left. Since Jimmy and Swanny were off duty, there was space to the right of me for the hour-long journey. Bawds plonked himself down and, since I don’t really listen to music on headphones, I steeled myself for polite conversation.

  He was nervous, a little too eager, as he immediately outlined his thoughts on the relevance of his trade. To be honest, I was standoffish. I knew the advantages of training the brain but had never really thrown myself into it. I preferred the more literal benefits of a biceps curl, bench press or squat in the gym.