Book Review – The Autobiography by Alastair Cook and Michael Calvin (I presume Newman wasn’t available)
Also available on my review blog called “Stuff”
First up, no chance was I paying full price for this – I got it in a charity shop a while back. I have had it on the book case for a long time, and for some reason I wanted it gone, so I decided to read it. I don’t know, because they were so memorable, whether he’d done one or two ghost written books in the past, but they weren’t classics. They were mid-career, pre-Captaincy drivel where nothing is allowed to be said that might cause the first bit of controversy. They are wastes of time, yet I still buy them.
So this book does not have the excuse of being mid-career for being tripe. But for large swathes of it, it is. My cards are firmly on the table at the start. I don’t like him. Or maybe more accurately, I don’t like what he represented, and it boils down to 2014. I could rehash that all here, but it wouldn’t be the best thing to do. What you might want to read by way of background is the 2014 posts on How Did We Lose In Adelaide, my farewell to his career and his time as captain.
A journo once said to me that the end of career book by Cook would be dull, like a sheep with a brain injury. It’s not quite that dull, but it is a book with so many contradictions that it is scarcely believable. Here is a man who doesn’t look at social media, but is hurt by it. A man who says the buck stopped with him over the Ashes debacle in 2013/14 and then fired someone else. A man who saw the greatest concerted media and establishment campaign I have ever seen for an incumbent captain to protect him, and has the cheek to think his opponents were “well orchestrated”. A man who claims that he was hung out to dry by the ECB, which in some senses he was, but not for the reasons he states, but also was allowed to go two years without a test hundred and no-one could even dare suggest to drop him. A man who wanted to come clean at the time on the KP affair, but in the book comes up with milquetoast reasons questioning motivation and never having the balls to call him a liar. Which he infers, of course.
There are traits in there to admire. As an opener he is the top performer for England in my lifetime, with plenty of double tons, that wonderful series in 2010-11 in Australia, and as impressive in India a couple of years later. I think he was given a hell of a pass as test opener when others failed around him and were dropped, and the ECB having backed him after the Ashes in 2013-14 couldn’t oust him straight away from the ODI side so waited nine months. All his England coaches were good (not a lot on Fletcher), he clearly loves Graham Gooch, and a lot of time for Andy Flower and Peter Moores, but the only player he really takes to task and questions commitment of is Pietersen.
But he pulls those punches. “While he played fantastic innings, and mostly was great, at times when he wasn’t interested he would not hide it, in team meetings and such…” “He ruined Andrew Strauss’ 100th test, but he did go to see them to apologise” (that old bullshit) and while he can be questioned over motives like returning to India after the Mumbai attack (er, Alastair, that was the ECB) so he could play in the IPL, Matt Prior’s strafing of Jonathan Trott’s fielding is totally fine. While KP saw out the tour in 2013-14, being our least worst batsman, Graeme Swann tossing off home midway through was “totally understandable”. I am not daft, KP was probably a real handful. But how would you react on a tour falling apart, your spinner deciding to mail it in and eff off home for Christmas, you play a bad shot to get out, and the captain’s mentor tells you as you walk through the door “shit shot, shit shot”. They had a row. Shit comment, Goochie. Shit comment. Wonder if he did the same to Cook when he holed out 7th ball with a reckless hook shot in the test before…..
It was clear that Cook was threatened by Pietersen and wanted him gone. Fair enough. But that wasn’t the narrative at the time, and he knows it. It was that Cook was a young captain (although he’d been playing tests for 8 years), that there was no alternative (and the press briefed against experienced players who might have been tried – see Ian Bell), and that even though the runs were scarce, his place was never under question. Cook acts as if anyone slagging him off for the Sri Lanka debacle with Mathews and Herath has an agenda (Warne’s criticism of this awful captaincy is couched in being a mate of KP) and yet for someone so downtrodden and victimised, the applause for his 90-odd at Southampton was so very touching. You get my drift.
There’s some good stuff in there about his approach to batting. Some interesting information on team dynamics. There are lots of people who were good friends, effusive about Cook and Broad. But it’s tedious. I skipped the farming chapter, and had some wry amusement when he says he loves shooting, because whenever we showed the picture of him with the dead young deer, his fans went mad at us.
Calvin was as vicious against KP as any journalist at the time, which did make it fairly obvious he might ghost write, as I assume Paul Newman wasn’t available. I hope his own books, which I have a couple of, are better written. Also, I know it is minor, but there are two rubbish errors of fact that just grate. Firstly, Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow did not make their massive partnership at Durban, but at Cape Town, which Cook claims to be one of his favourite grounds. Also, Collingwood did not make his hundred to save his career against South Africa in 2008 at Trent Bridge, but at Edgbaston. For a book that oh so passive aggressively has the longest statistical annex I have seen in an autobiography, this is dreadful.
I know. I am unfair. I am the person on that emotional final test, my last day at a test match being Day 1, who did not give him a standing O, did not clap his 50, and yes, was mildly pleased that I didn’t have to see him make a hundred. The second innings ton was made while at a dear friend’s funeral – perspective and all that.
He probably isn’t a bad person, he’s very driven, he made the most of a great career, and he scored a lot of runs and made many people happy. I respect the hell out of him for that, and for him playing for Essex post-test career (he was young to retire at 32). I can see that, and yet blanche at the self pity. To think the groundswell of support for KP post that decision was a carefully orchestrated media plan by well known figures is bollocks. The amount of times I was called a front for Piers Morgan was laughable. I can’t stand the bloke. I was angry because I saw it for what it was. The establishment rallying around their type of bloke. Not the loud-mouthed, brazen, want to be paid superstar who had to be managed. Better to have Gary Ballance than Kevin Pietersen. Well done all concerned.
Rubbish. 1/5
Song Lyric – Cry Me A River by Justin Timberlake
Being Outside Cricket 
He is still being given the red carpet treatment now. How someone as boring, and inarticulate can move seamlessly on a magic carpet ride into media and commentary is shocking to me. But a “name” or “celebrity” is more important than actual broadcasting talent in the media these days.
Just before the recent Ashes tour Cook is on a podcast with Michael Vaughan, Phil Tufnell, and David Lloyd. It’s called “Stick to cricket.”
Anyway, on this particular episode they have Alan Lamb and Gladstone Small on to talk about the 1987 tour. (The so called “can’t bat, can’t bowl can’t field.” tour. ) It’s about how they used to do preparation by playing state games leading up to the Tests, and all the fun that accompanied it.
Lamb and Small are very, very funny, and are great tellers of stories from that time. Enormous drinking was had and how Botham and Gower had wine sponsors so the bus was full of crates of Bollinger. But what is fascinating, and very revealing both regards Cook and the general societal changes that have occurred in 40 odd years is he can’t belive a word of it. He sits open mouthed at the various hilarious stories from the past that are recalled.
He is generally shocked about how things were. For example there is no coach as such, just a tour manger. Mickey Stewart is a sort of all round coach, but with little power. Lamb hilariously tells how the team meetings consisted of no real analysis of opponents. There were no videos of opponents, just a pre match dinner where more attention was given to the wine list.
At one point Cook actually says….. “this can’t be true.”….When all the others say…..oh yes, it is true….he says………”but who tells you what to do, like when to get the bus?” Lamb points out that they were given a time to be on the bus, and if you missed it you had to get a taxi. Cook’s reaction is revealing how much the modern sportsman is cocooned in a world of cotton wool, where everything is done for them.
Gladstone Small admits that Australia then were not the power house team they would go onto become. Which is completely true, The West Indies were the number one team at that time, but even so the modern sportsman is baffled by a world in which players had to do more for themselves. Revealingly Gladstone points out that England players had to pay for their own laundry, and had to pay for their wives and girlfriends to fly out, and for their hotel accommodation. Lamb says “by the end of the tour you were often out of pocket.”
Obviously I have never read his book, and never will, but it sounds exactly as I would expect. Particularly the contradictions. Why do people say they never read the media , but yet are completely informed about everything ever said about them?
In light of the revelations regarding Harry Brook, perhaps things have not changed as much as we thought. Instead, it is Cook who is just dull, plain milk toast. Very much like most of his batting. Let me be clear, there is a role for players like him. Always have been in Test cricket. But they should not be put in charge of more adventurous, and so called flair players. They are too one dimensional characters to understand them.
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