Col­in EH Croft

Machel Mon­tano, the jus­ti­fi­ably much cel­e­brat­ed so­ca per­former and front-man of his HD-Fam­i­ly band from T&T, should agree that Eng­land's Test crick­et cap­tain, Alas­tair Nathan Cook, to para­phrase Machel him­self, is a "re­al boss" in many more ways than just the ob­vi­ous!

With team-mates com­mit­ting hara-kiri or be­ing gen­uine­ly dis­missed by a West In­dies bowl­ing at­tack part­ly im­proved for Test No. 3, Cook showed how to bat­tle on a tough deck, nev­er flinch­ing, giv­ing no quar­ter, his con­cen­tra­tion just wan­ing at the end of his long, weary, first-day in­nings.

To be so care­less­ly dis­missed with the last ball of an at­tri­tion­al 1st day would have been Cook's mas­sive dis­ap­point­ment, af­ter his 26th Test cen­tu­ry, high­est in the an­nals of Eng­lish Test crick­et, in 112 Tests, an ex­cel­lent 105 in six hard hours of com­bat, an ef­fort with which Ad­mi­ral Lord Ho­r­a­tio Nel­son would have been proud.

The British Flag Of­fi­cer, Knight, and in­spi­ra­tional leader whose leg­end con­tin­ues to this day � 'Britain ex­pects that every man will do his du­ty' - could not have fought bet­ter in his fi­nal, fa­tal vic­to­ry at Trafal­gar. Cook was in his own "Bat­tle of Kens­ing­ton!'

Much ma­ligned for slow­ness, lack of volatil­i­ty at the crease, staid in over­all ap­proach, even ac­cused of lack­ing any crick­et­ing per­son­al­i­ty what­so­ev­er, and dropped from his coun­try's ODI team, Cook re­tal­i­at­ed with a su­perbly calm, clas­si­cal, per­fect-for-pur­pose cen­tu­ry.

You can bet that no Eng­lish sup­port­er would be ridi­cul­ing Cook now. His sec­ond cen­tu­ry at the "Mec­ca", af­ter 94 and 139 not out there in 2009, was as au­then­tic a Test cen­tu­ry; dour but dili­gent; as has been seen any­where in the Caribbean.

Cook's 105 was a true dis­play of grit, dogged­ness and Test match bat­ting char­ac­ter. WI won that first day, get­ting sev­en wick­ets, but Cook won his own per­son­al war, as that was his first Test cen­tu­ry for near­ly two years, his last com­ing against New Zealand on 24th May 2013.

Hav­ing honed my fast bowl­ing skills in the nets against Guyanese left-hand­ed Test bats­men Roy Fred­er­icks, Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallichar­ran and Leonard Baichan, I can at­test that left-han­ders are ter­ri­bly dif­fi­cult to bowl to, es­pe­cial­ly if, as the best usu­al­ly are, they can judge lengths and line al­most to the mil­lime­ter, as Cook did on Day 1, Test No 3, against WI.

Any fast bowler's ad­di­tion­al weapon against good left-hand­ed bats­men is to learn as to how to bowl just as well from around the wick­et as bowl­ing over the wick­et, par­tic­u­lar­ly if one bowls pre­dom­i­nant­ly fast, slant­ed off-cut­ters, as I did, and as Shan­non Gabriel now does for WI.When I played for WI, "Big Bird" Joel Gar­ner, Michael Hold­ing and Mal­com Mar­shall, due to their close­ness to the non-strik­ers stumps on de­liv­ery, way "straighter" than I was on de­liv­ery, were the ones reg­u­lar­ly tasked with get­ting op­pos­ing left-han­ders out.

I did get some suc­cess, though, against pro­lif­ic left-han­ders in­clud­ing Pak­istan's Wasim Ra­ja and Sadiq Mo­ham­mad, Aus­tralia's Graeme Wood, Al­lan Bor­der and Rod­ney Marsh, New Zealand's un­der­rat­ed John Wright and Bruce Edgar, and ar­guably the best left-han­der I have ever bowled to in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, Eng­land's bat­ting doyen, David Gow­er.

Know­ing how to bowl well from around the wick­et helped me with those ex­cel­lent left-han­ders, but de­liv­er­ing from around the wick­et is not an easy ex­er­cise, tak­ing much pow­er, strength and vast­ly dif­fer­ent po­si­tion­ing of the body.Gabriel must add that art to his bowl­ing im­me­di­ate­ly, or, even as he bowled well in Eng­land's 1st in­nings, he will miss out on oth­er pos­si­ble dis­missals.

Ja­son Hold­er al­so bowled well, but Jerome Tay­lor looked more like Ke­mar Roach ap­peared in that dis­ap­point­ing 2nd Test; tired, get­ting noth­ing from the re­serves, per­haps al­so be­ing too in­jured to be ac­tu­al­ly play­ing. Tay­lor's pis­tons seemed sim­i­lar­ly blown.Veerasam­my Per­maul could yet have a big part to play for WI to win this game, but he will have to be se­vere­ly stingi­er if he is to be WI's hero come Mon­day, be­fore WI bats last.

Any­way, Cook re­minds me, more than any­one else, of Eng­land's John Edrich, who in late 1960's and ear­ly 1970's, be­came the peren­ni­al open­ing part­ner of in­domitable Ge­of­frey Boy­cott.Play­ing for Lan­cashire CCC at the start of my ca­reer in 1977/8, against Sur­rey CCC and Edrich, at the tail end of his ca­reer, he was still just as tough to get out, even then.

Edrich and Boy­cott were al­so quite suc­cess­ful at Kens­ing­ton Oval, in 1968, the pair putting on 172 for the first wick­et against a great WI bowl­ing at­tack which con­sist­ed of (Sir) Garfield Sobers, (Sir) Wes Hall, Char­lie Grif­fith, Lance Gibbs and David Hol­ford in their crick­et­ing pomp.Edrich, not un­like Cook, made a dogged 146 in near­ly eight hours at the crease, while Boy­cott, much to his cha­grin, got a sprite­ly 90, by his stan­dards, in just over four hours, in a drawn game.

Cook's work is not yet done, for it is nor­mal­ly the third in­nings of a Test; to­day (Sun­day); which changes for­tunes of Test match­es. Look out for him try­ing to lead from the front again. En­joy!