Alastair Cook

I doubt I was the only spectator of a certain age to be reminded of something when I watched Alastair Cook score his artistic century at Lord’s last Thursday. It was, of course, another elegant left-hander, David Gower. At exactly the same age — 22 — Gower was taking 200 off the Indians at Edgbaston in the summer of 1979, and doing so with the same verve, delicacy and understated power as Cook showed against the West Indies in his 105 last week.

It is hard to think who, in the intervening 30 years, has come close to showing the same mixture of class and ease as the Essex batsman now demonstrates.

The very rarity of Cook’s sublime talent demands that it should be cherished and preserved: not merely so that he can rack up the runs for himself and his team, but for a still bigger role that seems already to be beckoning at him, a few years down the line.

Cook has had a charmed start to his career in Test cricket, the horrors of last winter in Australia notwithstanding. After 15 Tests (in an international career lasting barely 15 months) he is averaging 46, which seems to suggest he knows what he is doing: he has scored five hundreds and four fifties, suggesting in turn a rather good conversion rate.

He is one of those players who has always seemed to find things easy, rather in the manner that Gower himself used to intimate that he did.

A hugely successful schoolboy batsman at Bedford, Cook showed an immediate facility for first-class cricket when he went to Essex. His transition to the international stage was just as effortless: he is good, for the most part, under pressure.

Dragged out of an England A tour in the West Indies to help out in an injury crisis while England toured India in March 2006, he scored 60 in the first innings and a century in the second. Much is made these days of the importance of match preparation in local conditions, and rightly so.

Cook, however, seems to have abilities that are naturally of such a high level that he can adapt to any circumstances with ease. Even when the heat was on in the recent Ashes series he managed to treat misfortune and difficulty as important lessons for the future, rather than as an excuse to head for the bar or some other form of psychiatric help.

It is hard to think now that anyone could supplant him as England opener. His coolness and natural authority mark him out as a captain-in-waiting, an unfortunate handle to have, though it is (as Michael Atherton, for one, would testify) one he cannot avoid.

There is always the danger — and we have seen this too often in recent years, whether with Andrew Flintoff or even Michael Vaughan — that the form of a brilliant player declines the minute he is put in charge and asked to make ball-by-ball tactical decisions. To judge from how he has taken his baptism in Test cricket, Cook has the character to deal with that.

The real question, therefore, is how best to nurture Cook’s considerable talent over the next few years, not until there is a vacancy at the top, but to ensure that he preserves his form and his authority until the opening arises.

Those who remember Gower will recall also his over-casual approach to leadership that undid him in the (for England) nightmare series against the West Indies here in 1984.

The present coaching regime, and the atmosphere in which younger England players such as Cook are brought up, should help prevent attitude problems seeping into his system.