Andrew Strauss: My last week as England captain was hard

“One of the things I was most uncomfortable about with my decision was that I was retiring without having this situation resolved fully. I didn’t want to leave it on Andy Flower’s plate or put it in Alastair Cook’s hands, but in the end it would have been the wrong reason for me to stay on. That week before the last Test was a difficult week – the run-in to selecting the side, my 100th Test, and a Test we desperately needed to win. My second innings against South Africa was the only time in my career where I’ve walked out to the middle and my mind was completely fuzzy. It was at the end of a long day, and it had been a long week, and I just couldn’t concentrate, and that was a shame. At the back of my mind I was reasonably clear that it was going to be my last innings for England and I wasn’t in a position to play as well as I would have liked to.”