Cook hails hero Gooch as prepares to break record

Little more than a year ago, it fell to Alastair Cook, as England's captain, to explain to his cricketing mentor Graham Gooch that he was about to be sacked as England's batting coach. It can safely be assumed that it was one of the hardest conversations of his life, and a conversation he knew he needed to have. Gooch had guided Cook from his earliest days on the Essex staff and now, the boy long become man, was telling him that he agreed with the judgment that it was time for the parting of the ways.

But it was not quite the parting of the ways. Not when the relationship ran so deep.

England turned to Mark Ramprakash; Cook sought to refresh his faltering form by seeking advice from a variety of sources. But it was not long before he was again searching out his lifetime mentor with the hangdog moustache and the shambling gait, running the country lanes under his instruction while clinging to a medicine ball, helping to collect the balls for the bowling machine, and hearing once again the no-nonsense Essex falsetto that had bounced across the walls of the Chelmsford indoor school and cleansed his mind since the first time he rocked back and imperiously pulled a county bowler to the boundary.

It was heartening to hear Cook confirm that he last spoke to Gooch only a couple of days ago, in the wake of the Lord's Test that had washed English cricket in bright colours again. Cook's substantial second-innings hundred, the ballast for England's victory, had taken him within 32 runs of Gooch's record as the most prolific England Test runmaker of all time, presenting him with the chance to usurp the batsman he called "The Great Man" in the second Investec Test at Headingley.

It was the same old Cook who politely swallowed his thoughts before the second Test at Headingley, rarely finishing one sentence before beginning another. Yet you suspected he was always going to get his accolade to Gooch word perfect. "There will only be one Graham Gooch," he said. "He is England's best-ever bat." It was payback time - perhaps the first of many - to the man whose replacement he accepted was necessary in an attempt to refresh the dressing room. These are the sentences in life that really matter.

Surpassing Gooch would be the perfect way, individually, to prepare for an Ashes series. That and the return of his old opening batting partner, Andrew Strauss, as director of England cricket, another presence who provides the atmosphere of congeniality, reliability - and, yes, "trust" if you must - in which Cook most prospers.

"I wouldn't put myself anywhere near in Goochie's class but it would be a great moment," Cook said. "As always with batting, it is always fraught with danger - you are always one ball away from getting out. However nice it will be to score 32 to pass the Great Man, that won't be enough for the game. You want to make big hundreds.

"Sitting in the changing room, you just don't believe you are top of the tree when you see the other guys you are statistically ahead of. I wouldn't be here, or anywhere near, without Goochie's help. It will be slightly strange to go past his record because without his hard work and dedication to me and my game I wouldn't have scored half the runs I have."

When they last spoke, they did not talk of Gooch's 8900 Test runs or whether Cook might finally usurp him at Headingley. It would be a surprise to learn that they ever had. They did not even talk about West Ham United, which Cook lightly indicated was something of a relief. It can be assumed that the new Franco--German accord did not quite make the conversational cut.

"We spoke about the things I did at Lord's and the things I could have done better," Cook said. There was probably nothing that he has not heard a thousand times. But there would probably be something pertinent, something misleadingly simple; something that Cook could believe would sustain him for the summer. The partnership is growing in faith again, rediscovering its old rhythms.

"We have worked together since I started on the Essex staff at 18. We both made a decision that I would try and work with different coaches. While it was really refreshing to work with different guys I think it is important that you have one guy you go back to. He knows your game and you as a person and I think that's vitally important. When you get scrutinised as much as you do at international level it is easy to get distracted. To have a guy you trust, and you have always worked with, is really important for a batter coming through."

Until Lord's offered English cricket a brighter future, little had gone right for Cook since Gooch became the first victim of the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash. Many others headed in turn for the exit, Cook himself lost the chance to skipper England in the World Cup, and the more his runs dried up, and the louder and more extreme the references to his impeccable character, the more debilitated he seemed to be.

Now all is goodness, and Cook can gaze upon a young England side with renewed hope. It would be an unsalvageable captain indeed who could not look upon a middle-order of Root, Stokes, Buttler and Moeen and feel a spring in his step. They may even eat away at his captaincy conservatism - whether he likes it or not. Scary times.

What a difference a week has made. Before the Lord's Test, you might have imagined that here was an ineffectual captain unlikely to survive a humiliating Ashes summer. Now he receives respectful recognition as the figurehead for a young and energetic England side that has the country in thrall. Private Eye, a magazine never slow to delight in the media's sudden shift of opinion, could have fun with that one.

The sudden shift of emphasis, this time at least, is forgivable, because Lord's was the rarest and most wonderful of Tests: a single match that managed entirely to change perceptions. Lord's did more than deliver England a Test victory, it revelled in the grandest of contests, offering the potential once again for English cricket, as it must, to look forward and not back, green shoots once again pushing to the surface through the manure that has provided such a stench for the past 18 months.