Shortly after lunch at The Oval, Alastair Cook leaned back like a man settling into his favourite well-worn upright chair and nudged Keshav Maharaj away through square leg for a single, making his ground with that familiar knock-kneed jog. The run brought up England’s hundred in the 29th over of a tough, tight, airless day in south London. As the crowd relaxed into a swell of applause Cook came down the pitch, summoned Joe Root and offered a slightly gawky, oddly touching fist-bump.
From a distance it looked more like a fraternal pat on his captain’s shoulder on a day when Cook pretty much carried England’s first innings on his back after Root had won the toss. Since the disintegration at Trent Bridge there has been plenty of ambient noise about England’s batting failings. If we are to believe the ancient mariners of the press box and commentary gantry these are more to do with things like fibre and grit and moral courage than faltering technique or lack of Test match rhythm.
On a squally, showery, bitty summer’s-day start of The Oval’s 100th Test, England’s most prolific centurion provided the best kind of riposte. For Cook this involved simply standing out in the middle with bat in hand for as long as he possibly could, letting the day, the ball and South Africa’s attack come to him, and ending a rain-affected day on 82 out of England’s 171 for four.
The dominant recurring image of Cook’s innings here was of a bat wafted high out of the line of the ball, knees bending with the bounce. Like queuing at the post office, or a cardboard cup of weak milky tea there is a quality of slightly clichéd but still beautifully reassuring Englishness about watching Cook bat like this. Not that he was passive. South Africa bowled with real discipline for long periods. But every time they strayed too close Cook seemed to be waiting, placing his attacking shots between the fielders with a chastening little crack of the wrists.
England needed him, too. By the time that hundred came up Keaton Jennings and Tom Westley had already come and gone, flickering in and out of sight like minor party guests who appear briefly in your line of vision then melt away. There are good nine ball ducks and bad nine ball ducks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear talk of a draggy, overly long nine-ball duck, but Jennings got quite close here.
Westley came and went in more decorative fashion, playing nicely to get to 25. When Maharaj appeared early on Westley produced the shot of the day, stepping across to whip through midwicket – the sort of shot you play with an umbrella in the mirror while imagining it’s your Test debut on a crunch day at The Oval with clouds gathering and men around the bat. Westley left well outside off stump right up to the moment he didn’t just after lunch and was caught pressing forward at a Chris Morris out-swinger.
After which South Africa bowled brilliantly for an hour and a half. Root had gambolled off to 26 off 27 balls but found himself reeled in as the seamers applied the tourniquet, like a summer migraine descending out of the heavy grey London air. Eventually Root edged a wonderful delivery from Philander. Dawid Malan had his stumps splayed by an evil, snaking, cackling brute of a yorker from Kagiso Rabada.
In the middle of which Cook simply carried on, taking 12 overs to go from 45 to 50, all the while allowing the waves to wash over him. His 55th Test 50 arrived off 128 balls with his sixth four, a cuffed back cut off Philander that was, four and half hours into the day, the first boundary hit off South Africa’s opening bowler.
It marked a significant moment for Cook. His batting has so often been about setting up and defining a game from the start, but his first innings scores have dropped off a cliff in the last year with no first innings 50 in his last 12 Tests before this one. The relentless accumulation of hundreds, daddy-hundreds, granddaddy hundreds has also slowed, with just two in two years and 15 completed scores of 40 or more unconverted in that time.
It is always tempting with great sports people to spot the first breath of real decline, the first unravelling of the threads. Cook will be 33 in December. In mid-afternoon here he went past 24,000 balls faced in Test cricket. A more simple explanation is that he has been bled dry, still recovering from the exhaustions of the captaincy, but perhaps with a reservoir of late-career runs still to be spent. For Cook and for his tyro captain this would be a perfect moment to rediscover those deeper gears.
