Cook must allow younger players to step up for team to thrive

Root, Stokes, Bairstow and Buttler have shown they can make decisions and cope with pressure

T his England Test team is so close to being a very good one and the next step in their development is to allow the emerging players to become the senior core of the side.

Sometimes captains and leaders have to evolve with the changing circumstances of the teams they manage. Sir Alex Ferguson changed his approach over time, depending on the characters in the team. He was brilliant at spotting when young players were ready to take on senior roles.

Alastair Cook could stay on as captain for another year or so but if that happens he needs to allow other players to lead the team. It is so obvious that Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler are the new leadership group with strong cricket brains, and are good under pressure.

These guys will be around for at least the next five years in Test cricket, if not longer, so they should be allowed to mould how the team plays going forward. It will be up to them to decide the legacy of this team.

When Cook was off the pitch yesterday Root put himself on to bowl and took two wickets. Would that have happened if Cook had not gone off? We will never really know but when you see decisions like that being made you think, ‘Come on, give these guys more freedom to have more of a say’.

This team are at that stage. Cook could become the perfect father-figure as captain but let the younger guys take control and run how the team plays. If that is to be more aggressive then so be it.

Let the current senior players like James Anderson and Stuart Broad take a back seat and concentrate on producing their skills. Do that to a high standard but allow younger players to take the team forward.

I fully expect England to lose this series comfortably, possibly 4-0. But there has been progress. Only a few weeks ago England had no real idea about their best XI. Now we have the makings of a top seven, but not through design by the selectors, more by accident of circumstance.

England only picked Haseeb Hameed to open because of failures in Bangladesh by others, but now he has a long-term future at the top of the order. They stumbled across Keaton Jennings due to injury and they have only played Buttler at seven because they picked this tour party while they were in Bangladesh, and saddled themselves with two out-of-form players in Gary Ballance and Ben Duckett. At the start of this series England would have hoped they would not need to pick Buttler. But now they have a top seven (Cook, Hameed, Jennings, Root, Bairstow, Stokes and Buttler) that I see taking England forward to next year’s Ashes.

Whatever happens in the rest of this Test and Chennai next week, I feel more confident about the future look of the England Test team. It is just the thinking and mindset that has to change and be entrusted to the younger players. They have earned the right to have more say.

I also hope those guys have been clever enough to have learned from watching Virat Kohli and how he has batted in this Test match.

This has been the stumbling block for England. They are bowled out too cheaply in the first innings of Test matches. They scored 400 here, which got them in the game, but an outstanding side would have made 550 on this wicket.

This England side could become an outstanding team, they have the talent.

But at the moment they are a good, but inconsistent, team.

Kohli showed them how. He came out batting with aggression, starting in third or fourth gear. He quickly hit a few boundaries but realised Murali Vijay was playing nicely so knocked the ball around and allowed his partner to dominate. England bowled nicely to him after lunch so he hung in there, and concentrated on surviving. As soon as wickets fell later in the afternoon he upped the scoring rate. It was a wonderful innings played against the spinning ball and with his team under pressure. He showed the skills and mental discipline you need at Test level. I accept he is a top player, one of the best in the world, but what makes him such a good batsman is his ability to go up and down the gears as the situation dictates.

It has been hard for England because they just do not have three spinners good enough to be selected in the team. In Mohali they made a mistake by picking three spinners on a seaming wicket. Here they picked four seamers on a spinning pitch. But I am not sure how relevant that all will be to the end result. We just have to accept India are better in these conditions. They will win the series because their spinners are better than England’s and their batsmen can play the turning ball.

The one disappointment is that England have only competed in two of the four Tests so far. I thought they would compete more. But only in Rajkot, where they scored 537 in the first innings, and in Mumbai have they stretched India. Having said that, this tour will stand them in good stead for the next time they play in the subcontinent. Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali should be better bowlers for this experience. But at the moment the gap between the two sides is just too wide.