Strauss among the best England captains

‘Challenge’ has always been the key word in Strauss’s vocabulary – he is looking for more of them, not fewer, in future life – so not surprisingly he was at his best against Australia. Not because he lived there for a couple of years in early childhood; not because he played three seasons of grade cricket in Sydney; but because Australia was the benchmark for the whole sport in his formative years.

..his special achievement lay, as if in defiance of his public-school manner and early dressing-room nickname of Lord Brocket, in appealing to the popular imagination. For this he has the Ashes to thank, and it is here that he can lay particular claim to belonging to English cricket’s elite. Like it or not, the casual observer will forgive most things as long as England are beating the Aussies.

I believe Strauss has not only been fatigued by the constant demands of making important decisions but by the scrutiny his batting has come under. He is an incredibly proud man and, as he said at his press conference, would never want to be viewed as a passenger. Strauss will not have enjoyed the fact that at times the performance of the England team seemed of secondary importance to his batting.

Strauss forged with Flower a partnership that produced an environment in which complacency was dispatched as briskly as the worst of individual foibles – and for a little while it seemed that even the great Pietersen believed. After a dream-like double century in Adelaide on the way to the Ashes triumph, it seemed that nothing short of a gag could stop his praise of the culture imposed by Strauss – or the supreme value of genuine team spirit.

So far Cook has met every cricketing challenge that has come his way. He is not quite so innocent and angelic as he looks. There is a touch of steel behind the smile. But it will not be easy. A four-Test series against India followed by ODI matches there after Christmas are among the toughest assignments in cricket.