It’s an incredible batting pitch. The West Indies’ bowlers are fair however unsensational. Britain won the throw. But – here’s the primary concern – Britain are 240-7. West Indies had by a wide margin the better of the day, and Britain are presumably setting out toward a genuinely deficient first-innings score. No part of this matters, obviously, to those reporters sent into eruptions of delight by Alastair Cook’s hundred years. The genuine test match is a simple sub-plot contrasted with the main thing – the recovery of their legend. The pundits have been ‘replied’, the questions ‘scattered, and the mists ‘lifted’. The Britain group, all things considered, is a main a vehicle for the worship and magnification of Cook.

All hail the brilliant sovereign! Once more, lo, the Dauphin rides.

Recently I composed that Cook needed to score a century yesterday. He appropriately did. One might say, all around good to him, and we ought not to be excessively boorish. You can’t request substantially more from a batsman, on some random day, than to make 100 – particularly as wickets were falling around him. In any case, it’s stunningly deceptive to presume that Cook’s accomplishment implies the finish of all contentions over his structure and authenticity.

In his segment the previous evening, Jonathan Agnew said that “to be negative about Cook, I’m apprehensive they have an issue”. All anybody eventually needs’ best for English cricket. Assuming we differ about unequivocally what that involves, does that mean we have an “issue”? Obviously, dissimilar to Jonathan, I don’t go out for supper with Cook, so maybe I’m one-sided. Cook’s century was not a goal of the discussion. It was a base necessity – and a sign of what I call ‘The Collingwood Rule’.

This directs that any top of the line batsman, assuming they play in each and every test match, will ultimately score a periodic hundred years. Eventually will come a day when they stay away from excusal. How long may, for instance, Scratch Compton have scored had he been permitted an unchallenged two-year run in the side? Trott will be dropped for disappointment in three progressive test matches. Cook can fall flat for whole, continuous, five-match series, yet stay intact.

There was some bilge emerging from the analysis boxes yesterday

A few pundits were splendid test cricketers. Some are incredible normal telecasters. A couple are both. And afterward there’s Ed Smith. Why bother with him? In any case, he depicted Cook’s hundred years as “superb”, which appeared extending the point a bit. Cook ought to have been out on 20, got entirely neatly at short leg. Later he came extremely close to playing on. The entire day he batted exclusively for himself, in any event, running out Moeen Ali in his self-centered franticness to arrive at his 100 years.

What’s more, when he did, he was out to an unfortunate shot, rather than involving the hundred as a stage for additional advancement.At the point when Kevin Petersen played for himself, and offered his wicket when all around set, he was abraded. Alastair Cook does the very same thing, and everybody grovels over him in kneeling adoration. Your own considerations are extremely welcome, on the previous play, however the present, as it unfurls.