Eh?
Cook is better than Bell because he has constructed so many platforms for England innings down the years, instead of failing to do a repair job and only getting a ton after some one else does higher up.
If Cook is a poor man's Chanderpaul, he is doing the decent thing and copping all the flak at #1 instead of hiding down the order behind the lesser players.
No such thing as luck over a career. Cheffy is an England hero.
Fair enough. It wasn't fair to compare him to Bell. I think Collingwood was better at those repair jobs than Bell.
I can’t ask that question without taking some things into account.
Cook had a devotee style backing of a professional board, before and all through his captaincy. With an unenviable amount of support. Think of how stupidly they wanted Cook to be captain in WC '15 that they persisted with him till the last minute. No one thought that was a good idea, but that's how absurdly devoted the ECB has been to Cook.
On the other hand, Shiv didn’t have that for most, if not all of his career.
We all know how the WICB handles things. How they've ruined or shortened more than one career.
Cook didn’t deal with that kind of professional instability. The only career ECB has ruined in the recent memory, is KP’s. And we know that was eventually settled by ECB putting up their Chef on a pedestal. [Remember the weird ye olde England, ‘noble’ and ‘good’ man with ‘values’ that ECB said made him the best choice?].
Cook, for most of his career has batted in an XI with Strauss, Trott, KP, Collingwood*, and now the likes of Root, Bairstow, etc. Bowlers have included a world class attack: Anderson, Broad, Flintoff, Graeme Swann etc.
Cook ‘won’, in India because of the spinners and KP.
Shiv was beginning his career when Walsh/Ambrose were in their twilight, Lara was ascendant and in Shiv's last dozen years, WI didn’t have a threatening bowling attack at all.
We know that as Lara's star grew, around him were only the likes of underdeveloped talents like Marlon Samuels, and Ronnie Sarwan.
Heck, even Darren Sammy was batting at #7 and bowling dibbly dobblies. Gayle was around for most of it, but threw his wicket a lot or scored too quickly too often to leave West Indies with too much time in the game they couldn't win.
So, It’s hard for me to imagine how Cook would succeed if he had played for a similar board in a similarly ****** team.
Purely on the terms of batting order, I can't disagree.
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