Alastair Cook bats for spin bowling coach in England

England skipper Alastair Cook is in utter disdain at the moment. Having lost the Test series 0-4, the English cricketer now sees himself amidst severe existential crisis. There have been questions about him retaining his captaincy floating in the media. Whether he quits captaincy or not, remains to be a question that only Cook can answer. For the moment, the English team needs to introspect at what went wrong for them after having started the tour well at Rajkot. Alastair Cook seems to have already found one of the answers for the failure.

He believes that had England pressed for a spin bowling coach, they could have bowled better. Former Pakistani cricketer Saqlain Mushtaq was with the team on the tour for the first 3 Tests. Interestingly, when Saqlain was around, Adil Rashid bagged 18 wickets in 3 matches with an average of 28.67. In the next two matches, after Saqlain’s departure, Rashid bagged only 5 wickets at an average of 69.

Cook cited the same and quoted, “The coincidence when Saqlain was around and how much better we bowled as a group, that’s something the system or whoever needs to look at, in terms of our spinners.”

He further admitted that the English spinners Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali were nowhere close in comparison to R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Jadeja and Ashwin bagged 26 and 28 wickets each in the series. The English spinners, Rashid, Moeen, Gareth Batty, Liam Dawson, Joe Root and Zafar Ansari, collectively bagged just 40 wickets.

“I think everyone can see we are suited to playing in seaming conditions. There’s no point hiding behind that fact. These conditions have tested us to our limits and I really don’t want to be disrespectful to Mo and Adil but they are not as good as Ashwin and Jadeja yet. They haven’t quite got the control and consistency, certainly in the first innings when there’s not much happening,” rued Alastair Cook.

The English skipper had a word of praise for Moeen Ali. But he reiterated that despite Moeen’s effort, he still lags behind in comparison to a full time spinner. He believes the team needs to have world class spin bowlers in order to succeed in subcontinental conditions.

“Mo has done an amazing job for us over a long period in terms of becoming England’s No. 1 spinner. He’s two wickets away from 100 so he’s done amazing things and will only get better and better. Without being disrespectful, without two gun, world-class spinners, winning in these conditions is going to be hard. In other conditions with our seamers and spinners, who are decent without being completely world-class, we’ll compete with anyone. But this is as hard as it gets for this side at the moment,” Cook concluded.