Thu, Jul 07, 2011 page19

• Cook’s century vindicates Sir Garfield Sobers’ belief

  • AFP, LONDON
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  Cricket great Sir Garfield Sobers’ belief in Alastair Cook’s one-day ability was rewarded by the England batsman’s century last weekend.

  Cook is now one of the world’s leading Test openers, but there are doubts as to whether he can score quickly enough in one-day internationals.

  It was a concern England’s selectors shared until they appointed him one-day captain, having left him out of their squad for this year’s World Cup, after Test skipper Andrew Strauss quit limited overs internationals.

  

  Sri Lanka wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara, left, looks on as England captain Alastair Cook plays a shot in their one-day international at Lord’s in London on Sunday.

  Photo: Reuters

  Former England captain Michael Atherton has labeled Cook “a plodder,” but Sobers, speaking just days before Cook made a century in England’s six-wicket defeat by Sri Lanka in the third one-day international at Lord’s on Sunday, was adamant the Essex left-hander could transfer his Test form into the shorter format.

  “In one-day cricket, I don’t agree with a lot of the scenarios people talk about,” West Indies star Sobers said in an interview at Derby’s Cathedral Quarter Hotel.

  “I feel if you are a good cricketer at any class of cricket you should be able to adapt into any position,” said Sobers, widely regarded as cricket’s greatest all-rounder. “Alastair Cook can play as good as any one-day player.”

  When Cook was struggling for runs last year some critics called for England to drop him from their Test side, but for Sobers, who has followed Cook’s career closely ever since the Englishman appeared in a schoolboy tournament named after him in his native Barbados, the problem was clear.

  “When Alastair was playing against Pakistan and [he] wasn’t getting any runs, he wasn’t allowing the ball to come to him, he was reaching for it,” said Sobers, whose place in cricket history would have been assured by his brilliant left-handed batting alone. “Since then, he allowed the ball to come to him, simple as that. All of a sudden he started to let the ball come to him and started making a tremendous amount of runs. I don’t see how you can hurt Alastair Cook’s Test career by letting him play a few one-day games and see how he goes. If he doesn’t go well, you drop him, but you know he’s had a trial.”

  Sobers appeared in just the lone one-day international match, against England in 1973, a year before he retired, but all the evidence from his career suggests Sobers, who when playing for English county Nottinghamshire became the first batsman to hit six sixes in a first-class over off Glamorgan’s Malcolm Nash in Swansea in 1968, would have thrived in the format.

  Sobers said he disapproved of putting cricketers into “boxes.”

  He said that Cook was in danger of being unfairly labeled, in the reverse of how former England left-handed batsman Neil Fairbrother found himself categorized as a one-day specialist back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

  “They were really unfair to Fairbrother,” Sobers said. “People brand a person too soon without giving them an opportunity to prove whether they are or not. It was the same with Fairbrother, why not give him two or three or four Tests, see how he goes and then come back and say: ‘He’s only a one-day cricketer?’ You can’t brand a person without a trial just like you can’t [fairly] sentence a person without a trial.”

  SPEECH SPARKS FUROR

  AFP, COLOMBO

  Former Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara is in hot water after his highly acclaimed lecture at Lord’s, where he criticized what he alleged was a corrupt and politicized cricket administration at home.

  Sangakkara received a standing ovation after his outspoken remarks, but they ruffled feathers back home in Sri Lanka, where Sri Lankan Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage ordered an investigation into the speech.

  “Sangakkara’s lecture at the MCC [Marylebone Cricket Club] seems to have disturbed a hornet’s nest,” the state-run Lankapuvath news agency said.

  The minister ordered Sri Lanka Cricket to make a report on Monday’s speech, it added. “Sangakkara is likely to be called to explain,” the agency said.

  The star’s controversial claims came just days after the Sri Lankan sports minister said he had forced the national cricket board committee to step down following allegations of financial mismanagement.

  In his speech, Sangakkara welcomed an International Cricket Council (ICC) directive requiring all national boards to be elected without political interference.

  “We have to aspire to better administration,” Sangakkara said. “The administration needs to adopt the same values enshrined by the team over the years — integrity, transparency, commitment and discipline.”

  He said power games among cricket administrators, as well as board politics, had triggered rifts, ill feeling and distrust among key players.

  He quit the captaincy after Sri Lanka lost the World Cup final to India.

  Sangakkara, 33, became the youngest man to deliver the Cowdrey Lecture at the MCC, which owns Lord’s. The lecture was inaugurated in 2001 in memory of the late former England captain Colin Cowdrey.

  Last week, the ICC gave all member boards until its next meeting in June next year to implement the new board ruling and a further 12 months before any sanctions would be considered.
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