The Ashes debacle - is Alastair Cook losing his grip as a captain?

The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The 2013–14 Ashes series is currently being played in Australia. The five venues for the series will be The Gabba, the Adelaide Oval, the WACA Ground, the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Sydney Cricket Ground.

In the first Test match, Australia won by 381 runs and in the second match, Australia won by 218 runs. It all happened under Cook , who delivered England its first away Ashes victory in seven attempts and 24 years on the team’s previous visit to Australia three years ago.

Alastair Cook took captaincy from Andrew Strauss, who retired midway through last year. Cook seemed impressive and disciplined from there and took his team to Ashes victory last year and continued this year in England. But in current series in Australia, neither him nor England is performing up to the expectations. So question arises - is Alastair Cook losing his grip as a captain?

With England woefully short of runs, having been dismissed for fewer than 200 in three of their four innings, Alastair Cook admitted he and the others have been guilty of poor shot selection. Cook argued the success of Mitchell Johnson so far in the series - he already has 17 wickets - was primarily due to poor selection. He said the way in which Joe Root and Kevin Pietersen played Johnson during their second-innings century partnership in Adelaide, provided a lesson on how to handle the hostile left arm seamer. On England’s last visit here, Cook and Strauss averaged 78.43 for their opening stands. That England had, until Saturday, averaged only 9.75 for the new first-wicket partnership with Carberry never scored higher than 63 and Cook highest score of 73.

"Our confidence has obviously had a hit in the first two games … but as a squad we’ve made a real conscious effort that we have to look forward into this game, rather than look back," Cook said on Thursday. "We’ve talked a good game. It’s about making sure we play a good game."
Cook said he held no concerns over his squad’s hunger to make amends for the defeats in Brisbane and Adelaide.
“It’s tough,” Cook said. “We have fallen into traps we shouldn’t have fallen into and our shot selection has let us down at times. But you can practice it by treating every ball in the nets as if it was in the middle and be strong on ourselves when doing that.”

The inescapable conclusion is that the Cook of three years ago would not have allowed himself playing some really bad cricketing shots. He seems to be under critics knife for his poor performance in Ashes but all his triumph can not be neglected. But a clean swipe by the Aussies will surely make the selectors go harsh against him but hopefully Alastair Cook will prove critics wrong. But the team needs to overcome Australia’s first innings of 385 and a two-nil series deficit, he needed to produce something well beyond three figures.