Sport Comment: Resilient Cook deserves an award
IT IS probably a two-horse race for Sports Personality of the Year at the moment, with Rory McIlroy a freckle ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the voting. But here’s a nomination that you probably haven’t considered, but who has another opportunity tomorrow to illustrate his strength of character and leadership skills, plus his not inconsiderable talent.
This has been an extraordinary year for England cricket captain Alastair Cook. In charge of a team that until last week couldn’t win a match, and as a batsman barely able to reach double figures, he has been dissected for months, pilloried for his inability to be Mike Brearley in the mind and a combination of Mike Atherton and Andrew Strauss in the middle. Justin Bieber must be the only person ridiculed on the same scale, because certainly no politician has been.
Early on, Cook chose to admit that all the criticism hurt, which only served to increase the flak several times over, ensuring that every pub bore began calling for him to be sacked, along with a variety of former colleagues in the England team.
But he’s still there. No knee-jerk footballing reaction from the England cricket authorities, and lo and behold, a happy band of men in white squared the five-Test series against India last week, and have the chance to take a 2-1 lead in Manchester over the next few days.
You may not like cricket. You may not like Cook. But you have to admire him for the way he’s rolled with every punch and refused to take the soft option and quit. We’ve witnessed desperate Cook and dispirited Cook, hopeless Cook and happy Cook. A character and an individual laid bare for all to see as the team and his own misfortunes have multiplied and then revived.
So if he does manage to score that elusive hundred sometime during the final two Tests and lead England to a series victory, we should all applaud the fortitude of the human spirit that allows an individual to confront self-doubt, as both a sportsman and a person, and in the public arena prove both critics and his inner demons wrong.
By December, he may not have won a drivers’ championship or a major golf title, but in the preceding 12 months Alastair Cook will have given us the most intimate of guides through his personality.