Alastair Cook - a tangible great and an intangible loss

Had Alastair Cook retired five years ago the loss to England would have been very different than it is today. It would still have been very significant, but it would have been more tangible.

Back then he was at the centre of everything - scoring runs, taking catches and providing dependable if not hugely imaginative leadership. There was Trott and Bell and Pietersen and Prior and Swann and Anderson and Broad, it was a fine side with a solid back bone of experience, but it was on Cook's axis that the team revolved. Remember India in 2012? KP's brilliant hundred in Mumbai, maybe his best, maybe one of THE best, and Swann and Panesar outbowling the Indians in their own backyard. Well that epic series victory was founded firmly and squarely on three outstanding if not instantly memorable captain's centuries. The first, in the face of almost certain defeat, was a defiant statement not only that his team still had the fight for the contest but they had the skill to win it. How quickly we can forgot. We really should not.

We also forget how great players force opponents to modify their strategies and tactics. For years Cook feasted on bowlers who could land the ball in the right spot five balls an over, but who would then either drop one a little wide and get scythed to the point boundary or, frustrated by the batsman's judgement outside off stump, would be drawn into delivering something a little straighter, only to see the ball clipped with minimal effort but maximum efficiency to the mid-wicket fence. Cook may only possess three shots (or four if you count the leave) but when he played them as well as he did (particularly the fourth) it seemed more than enough.

But faced with this conundrum bowlers have smartened up. They have embraced Cook's mantra and like an Aikido grandmaster are now using his great strength against him. On his second Ashes tour in 2010-11, the Aussies fed him a veritable feast of short and wide stuff on which he gorged handsomely and in record fashion. Since then he has found it tougher, as more disciplined bowlers probe relentlessly on a full length outside off stump. Patience was always Cook's game but now there are two players playing and the bowler holds most of the cards.

In response Cook's game has not unravelled but he has been unable to find a consistent answer to these new questions. On helpful surfaces and particularly against right arm bowlers such as Ishant Sharma and Morne Morkel who move the ball away from around the wicket he has looked a little lost. Whether it is, as Graham Gooch suggests, that the appetite to improve has finally left him (and frankly after 160 matches who can blame him) or that he has the lost the hope that he can improve, only he knows. Whichever it is, he has earnt the right to keep that truth to himself.

And what of the team, of English cricket, in the post-Cook era. Sad to say the runs and catches of recent times will be all too easily replaced but what of those intangibles, the things we, the public, are too far away to clearly see and that they, the players, are too close to fully appreciate: the experience, the calmness, the stubbornness, the dedication, the stamina and the will to succeed over and over again.

They say we never know what we have until it's gone. But in Alastair Cook's case it seems like we really do know and that it is an awful lot. Really how much more could there be? I guess we are about to find out.