ALASTAIR COOK EXCLUSIVE: Sri Lanka Test at Headingley was closest I came to quitting as captain... I was in a bad place

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Alastair Cook pauses as he reflects on a tumultuous year which saw his Ashes winners fall apart in Australia amid vicious recriminations before he embarked on a new era that has resembled a rollercoaster ride throughout the summer.

‘I’ve always known I’m not a quitter and that’s what has pleased me most,’ said this deceptively tough figure when pondering his lowest moments. ‘I didn’t take that option. I hung in there because I still have that fire and determination to try to lead England well.

‘That might change at some point or they might decide they don’t want me as captain any more but I can’t remember an England captain who’s had to discuss his position and future as much as I have.

Alastair Cook looks dejected at the lowest point of his summer, the Headingley Test defeat by Sri Lanka

Cook shows the strain against Sri Lanka (left) and is bowled during that fateful Headingley Test

‘I’ve surprised myself with how resilient I’ve been at the things which have been thrown at me. I’ve not come out of the other side as such, but I’ve got through it. It’s been such a challenge and to win that Test series against India made me smile because of what I’ve been through over the last 12 months.’

Not that a batsman who still looks destined to break every runscoring record in the English books is looking for sympathy. Throughout this interview he emphasises that he accepts and understands the nature of the bumpy journey that came with a 5-0 Ashes defeat and an aftermath which saw the bitter departure of Kevin Pietersen and the end of Andy Flower’s successful reign.

‘It sounds as if I’m moaning and saying "Poor me" but I’ve never felt like that. That is the job I’m in. It’s incredibly pressurised and highly scrutinised, even more so these days with social media, but I don’t want people to think I’m feeling sorry for myself. I am England captain and I do know it’s part of the territory. 

'Trying to lead through adversity is probably the hardest thing you will ever have to do but if you can do it, it makes it all the more enjoyable.’

The England captain watches the presentations stony-faced after the 5-0 Ashes whitewash Down Under

Cook had a poor series in Australia and here Mitchell Johnson celebrates bowling him in Adelaide

The day we meet is all about enjoyment. Cook is at Wanstead Cricket Club, where Essex meets east London, for the latest of his benefit days with a grassroots theme. Hundreds of children are treated to coaching from the England captain and Essex skipper James Foster before a match and fund-raising dinner.

This is a very different Alastair Cook to the man who does not relish speaking in public, the captain who sometimes struggles to get his message across in the articulate way that his predecessor Andrew Strauss would always do.

Cook is in his element and the people of this vibrant community club warm to him, as spectators around the country have all summer, as he spends 13 hours at Wanstead, not leaving until late in the night when every photo has been taken and every autograph signed. And he is not doing it just for himself either.

More than half of the money raised by his year will go to charity as recognition of the changing nature of cricket which sees leading England players spending less and less time at their counties and not really deserving of benefits.

The aftermath of the Ashes debacle was dominated by the sacking of Kevin Pietersen (left)

There was more bad news for Cook when India beat England at Lord's to take a 1-0 series lead

‘A benefit is an amazing cricketing institution but it probably wasn’t meant for England captains and it sat a little uneasy with me,’ admitted Cook. ‘But after a lot of chatting with the guys at Essex and in particular Neil Foster, who does a huge amount of work for the David Randall Foundation, I decided I should be proud to take one and use the year to raise as much money as we can.’

He is raising money for four charities in all, three of them obvious cricketing ones in Chance to Shine, the PCA Benevolent Fund and Mind. But it is the David Randall Foundation, a very personal choice, that is clearly closest to his heart.

It started to turn around for Cook at the Ageas Bowl, where he scored 95

‘I played age group cricket with David at Maldon and Essex all the way up. We opened the batting and Ravi Bopara was at three and David scored his share of the runs and was also a gifted musician. We were childhood friends and, as life is, some people get dealt a cruel hand and he got stomach cancer and didn’t survive.

‘So we set up this charity which is a bit like Make a Wish. It’s for terminally ill people to have special family days. David had a bucket list and went to Wimbledon three days before he died and never let the illness stop him.’

Cook was to later tell the people of Wanstead, who raised close to double their target of £10,000 for the day, that his benefit is about making David Randall proud and his old friend would surely be proud of how Cook reacted with dignity to the crisis which at times enveloped him this year.

For the first time he talks of how close he came to quitting as England captain and how a benefit function for another player saw the start of his comeback from the low point of embarrassment at Lord’s to a 3-1 win.

‘I went to a Tim Bresnan benefit lunch the day after Lord’s,’ said Cook.’ It wasn’t the greatest time to be showing my face too much in public. But there was a really good vibe in that room. I actually sat on Rod Bransgrove’s table and he said to me, "We’ll put on a really good week for you down at the Ageas Bowl. I can just feel that it’s going to go well". People were saying, "You’ll score runs, it will be good" and I left that room feeling far less despondent about what had happened.

‘There was probably a sense before the third Test that things couldn’t get any worse. What was it, 10 Tests without a win with seven defeats? I’d got to a point where if we’d lost again it would have been curtains, or close to it, so I was just determined to enjoy the week.

‘Then I got down to Southampton and it just felt good. Rod put on a really good week and the people who were looking after us and those around the ground all seemed so positive. The crowd then seemed to feed off that and it was a brilliant week to be around English cricket. We turned it around, a lot of the guys had their first Test win, and history says we got on a roll in Test cricket.’

Cook was all smiles during that Test in Southampton as England won to level the series

It was during that third Test that the English cricketing public showed without doubt that they were still supporting their captain. ‘It’s quite hard to know at times how much the people are behind you,’ admitted Cook.

‘I did have a lot of people come up to me offering support after I came home from Australia but it’s very easy to back someone when you meet them face to face. But that walk down the pavilion stairs when I went out to bat in Southampton was incredible. I could hear so many people saying, "Come on Cooky, you can do this" and the noise they made. It was really uplifting.

‘Then at lunch I walked off having made 48 and it was as if I’d made 248. There are little things in my career that I’ll always remember and I think I’ll remember the support I had during that week more than anything else.

‘It will live with me for ever. Gary Ballance said to me as we walked off, "You wouldn’t get this at Headingley" and I could take that two ways. Either it meant I didn’t have any support in Yorkshire or it meant the crowd would be thinking, "You’ve only got 48, you haven’t done anything yet." Which was a fair point!’

The England captain has always had the support of the fans and here he poses with some at Old Trafford

It was at Headingley where Cook had endured the earlier crisis of his summer, both before and during the second Test defeat by Sri Lanka. Before the game the relentless criticism of Cook by Shane Warne dominated the agenda and the England captain had bitten back, saying ‘something has to be done.’

‘The Warne thing was taken a bit out of context actually,’ Cook insists now. ‘We’d played well at Lord’s against Sri Lanka without quite getting over the line and I still don’t think I could have declared any earlier. OK, others might have a different opinion but we were seven down and only 200 ahead before Ballance started playing really positively and we’d lost five Tests in a row. If I’d pulled out and they’d got them three down I would have looked like an idiot.

‘We were a review and a catch that didn’t carry away from winning on a flat wicket and then I got into this press conference at Headingley the next week and all the media talked about was negative stuff. It was Ian Bell’s 100th Test and I was barely asked about that or anything positive and it just got me really angry.

The contrast was stark as Cook and James Anderson celebrated at The Oval after beating India 3-1

VIDEO Cook urges England to build on win 

‘So then Jonathan Agnew (in his BBC interview that followed the main press conference) caught me at a time where I felt under the cosh again and offended because I hadn’t been asked about Bell. Then he asked me a direct question about Warne which I answered. But I was annoyed with the media as a whole.

‘Then at Headingley we conspired to have one of our worst of all days on that fourth day. I was emotionally low that night and that was the closest I came to giving up the job. I was emotionally raw and in a bad space and I was questioning myself. As I later did at Lord’s after India, too.

‘But I can’t tell you how proud I am to be England captain. I genuinely mean it. The honour that has been bestowed on me is an incredible one and all that I’ve gone through this year will define me. That sits easy with me now and if it gets taken away from me I know I’ve thrown everything into the job.

‘I could live with it now but I don’t think I would have dealt with it too well if it had happened during the summer because I wasn’t in a great spot. I came through it, we won that series and I firmly believe I‘ve got more to offer the leadership role for England, in both forms of the game for the moment. I feel that stability is very important and things take time to evolve.’ 

Cook was all smiles as the champagne flowed after England completed their Test series win over India

England have invested so much in Cook as much as for what he does off the field, in trying to re-create the right team environment that somewhere down the line England lost. ‘The culture is a thing that is important,’ he said. ’The awareness of what we’re doing as a side. And realising how important the team environment is. 

'We have to appreciate how lucky we are to play for England. Wearing the Three Lions should be the proudest thing you ever do and you have to understand the history behind England before you can really appreciate that.

‘There’s a lot of work still to do on that but hopefully over time we can get there. Possibly that had been forgotten. We had a sustained period of success and things had evolved and unravelled. It’s about winning at the end of the day, yes, but there is more to it than just whether you win or lose games of cricket. You wear the cap for such a short space of time that you have to be aware of what came before you and how you leave the cap when you finish.’

The final twist in his summer’s tale came after Cook had appeared to put all questions about his leadership behind him. The one-day series against India started with him being hurt by criticism from friend and recent team-mate Graeme Swann. 

Despite England's turnaround in their Test fortunes, they were hammered by India in the one-day series

‘What he said was a real disappointment for me,’ said Cook. ‘I haven’t yet managed to speak to him. It was what it was. I need to speak to him first before I say any more about it. We’ve been trying to catch up. We will do.’

Then a crushing 3-1 one-day series defeat just five months before the World Cup means that Cook is not totally certain of being captain when England name their one-day squad early next week for the pre-World Cup tour of Sri Lanka.

‘The one-day series was a blow and it shows how much work we’ve got to do before the World Cup,’ said Cook. ‘But absolutely we can still win it. You’ve got to peak at the right time to win a World Cup but it was a shock how badly we played in those first two or three games. I think we have a squad of about 20 to select from and we have a lot of work to do, initially as individuals in the two or three months up until Sri Lanka. The potential for growth is huge.

‘I’m hoping to carry on. Of course I’d be devastated if I stop now but if they think it’s the right decision for English cricket for me to go as one-day captain I’d have to accept it. Yes my game has had a tough 12 months but I think we saw signs of real improvement in the Test series and I was starting to get there in the one-day games. 

Cook poses for a selfie with a fan at a benefit event in Essex earlier this month

'What has frustrated me is getting a lot of starts without going on. If you turn one of those 40s to a 120 things change very quickly. I’ve just got to keep working on my game because I know it will turn back in my favour. I just know my record suggests I’m good enough to play international cricket.’

No-one would dispute that and no-one would dispute that Cook will be remembered as one of England’s greatest batsmen. How history records him as a captain is yet to be decided but he has already won the Ashes and defeated India home and away in Test cricket. So it’s hardly the worst record.

‘I just want to carry on and develop this side as much as I can while I’m still hungry to do it,’ he added. ‘What I do know is you miss playing cricket when you stop. I’ve still got hunger to train and play. My back will always be an issue but for the foreseeable future I hope to still play for England.’

And make his old friend David Randall proud.

ALASTAIR COOK'S YEAR OF SUFFERING... 

Aug 2013

Cook’s stock is very high. A draw at The Oval secures a 3-0 Ashes victory which means he has beaten Australia three series on trot. But the wheels start to come off when it emerges that several England players urinated on the pitch in post-match celebrations.

Nov 2013

The defence of the urn in back-to-back Ashes series gets off to the worst possible start. England are blown away in Brisbane by an inspired Mitchell Johnson. Worse follows after the game when England’s rock-solid No 3 Jonathan Trott is forced to fly home due to a stress-related illness.

Dec 2013/Jan 2014

The Ashes are surrendered in double-quick time with defeat in Perth and Cook loses another of his star men when Graeme Swann retires with immediate effect. The 5-0 humiliation is complete in Sydney as Cook endures a nightmare series with the bat.

June 2014

What is expected to be a straightforward two-match Test series at home to Sri Lanka goes disastrously wrong. In the first Test at Lord’s, Cook is criticised for declaring too late and the decision proves costly as England run out of time on the last day to take the final Sri Lankan wicket.

Cook is bowled out by Sri Lanka's Nuwan Kulasekara in England's opening Test defeat at Lord's

June 2014

Cook hits out at his arch-critic Shane Warne, claiming it has been ‘three years of criticism’ and ‘something must be done’ about the garrulous Aussie. At Leeds, Cook’s captaincy is lambasted again as Sri Lanka pull off a surprise series win.

July 2014

After the shock defeat by Sri Lanka in the warm-up series, India arrive as the main course of the summer and Cook’s form (or lack of it) is now a national talking point. England go 1-0 down with a spineless defeat at Lord’s and Cook fails again (twice) with the bat.

July 2014/Aug 2014

Cook arrives at Southampton at his lowest ebb but defies his critics with scores of 95 and 70 not out as England crush India. Two more thrashings for the tourists follow at Old Trafford and The Oval, and an unlikely Test turnaround is complete.

Aug 2014

Cook’s place in the one-day team is questioned by Michael Vaughan and Graeme Swann (left), who says Cook must step down as ODI captain before the 2015 World Cup. Cook says he is disappointed in Swann, who he calls a ‘so-called friend’.