Originally Posted by mimik1uk:
“there are quite a few points in that post i dont think i agree with bhav
cook's strength as a batsman has never been his range of shots, its been his patience, its one thing saying bowlers will just bowl full and wide to him but when he is at his best he just leaves those, forces the bowlers to bowl a tighter line if they want to get him out and then he can score.
i've not been his biggest fan but i cant argue with how single-minded he is and i dont see any reasons why he wont play for 5 or 6 more years, he has never struck me as someone who will just walk away. he has never really had injury problems either and doesn't play a load of cricket now outside of tests.
as far as the comment on spin, i dont think he is a good player of spin, he is a good defender against spin but is extremely limited in his scoring shots against it. to me a good player of spin is someone who can do both.”
In my head reckon he leaving after the next ashes.
Can't see him playing on after that.
just wanna say Cook doesn't show the same level of patience when teams block his cut and pull shots and these days bowlers just don't bowl to his strength anymore.
it is really one of the reasons why he averages low against NZ, Australia, SA and pakistan teams since they generally never serve him his strengths and in recent times even Sri lanka and india have bowled better to him.
He does have the mental strength to survive but if he does get out he would get out for like 30-50 etc instead of say 70-100 because he hasn't been scoring runs like he would have done before since bowlers haven't provided the bad balls they did before.
Reckon we gonna disagree with his spin status, Cook might not be attractive against spin but he got more shots to it than he does with the pace men and that really why he averages so high against spin and the worse part is that he literally plays no risky shots to spin, never goes out of his crease or tries to destroy spinners.
no question about it spinner don't actually know any ways to getting him out on these conditions.
especially on the first few days when the ball doesn't turn that much and spinner normally get wickets when batsman make mistakes or misjudge the length or flight of the ball cook hardly makes any mistakes on this front.