The Ashes: Cook Has Got What It Takes

Here beginneth the lesson. How a good bowler, one who has done his homework, sets up a batsman, works him like a fly fisherman would a salmon, and then hooks him. Stuart Clark, late to Test cricket, has gained a burgeoning and worthy reputation as a fast-medium bowler of considerable discipline, technical skill and intellect. In Brisbane he was Australia's best bowler, and in Adelaide too, until the fat boy got the bit between his teeth. Now here he was, late in the evening of the fourth day, coming on from the City End at the Adelaide Oval to bowl the 11th over of England's second innings to Alastair Cook.

The Australians have a sneaking admiration for the young left-hander. They believe him to be a batsman of immense character and promise, with a real Test-match temperament. But they reckon they have got his measure too, spotted flaws in his technique that in international terms is still in its adolescence. Not just Shane Warne out of the rough either. In the warm-up match in Sydney, before Marcus Trescothick went home, Cook made a stylish half-century, ended only when Glenn McGrath went round the wicket and speared him out lbw. "I don't know why no one has done it before," declared the great bowler, the finest exponent of that mode of attack to left-handers the game has seen. It cramps them up, and if you can shade it away, then there is the edge. See what it did to Adam Gilchrist. So in the first Test, round the wicket he went, Cook duly edged his first ball from that angle and Warne pouched the catch.

In Adelaide, though, it was different. This time it was Clark who gave him the run-around. In the first innings he had made 27 solid but unspectacular runs when the bowler dangled the bait outside off-stump, Cook drove and edged to Gilchrist. Frustrating. A waste. The ball was 20 overs old, the point at which the hardness tends to go and the seam flattens. There was a day's batting to enjoy. It was the second innings, however, that saw bowler, his technique and his plans in perfect synchrony. Cook, looking to see the day through to the close in half an hour or so, had made nine.

Clark's first ball, over the wicket, was spot on length and line and Cook moved on to his front foot to defend. The second delivery, teasing and tempting, was pushed wide enough for the batsman to flag it through to the keeper, and the third defended as with the first. Now, though, Clark could see the chink. Cook is a batsman who needs to play within his own space, not allowing his bat to stray away from his body in defence. The Australians think they can drag him from that zone. Clark's fourth ball was inches wider, demanding a stroke and Cook moved forward once more, but this time, realising that the ball was slanted that fraction more across him, adjusted with his bat. The ball hit the middle of the blade, but Clark would have seen the response: a top batsman might have played and missed, holding the line of his stroke rather than attempting to adjust.

Cook went forward to the penultimate ball of a demanding over and played studiously. One to go. This time Clark went wider at the crease, the better to create an angle, and delivered marginally further away from the batsman's body. The line, length and execution were perfect. Cook's bat was dragged mesmerically away from his body, the ball found the edge and Clark had conjured a wicket in brilliant fashion.

England need Cook to come good. He is a brilliant prospect, a young man, born on Christmas Day - as was Trescothick, the fellow he replaced at the top of the order - who in 10 years' time, if Kevin Pietersen doesn't get there first, may well have outstripped any previous England batsman and become the first to 10,000 Test runs. The signs are there: the double century in a two-day warm-up game against the Australians at Chelmsford the summer before last; his dash to Nagpur from Antigua and century on debut while still jet-lagged; centuries in successive Tests against Pakistan last season; even his hundred in another two-day game over the weekend, against Western Australia, if frenetic at the start (his attempts to pull and hook might have won first prize in a Perth fly-swatting contest), evolved into a classy display, until he retired at the tea interval. Eleven Tests, into the region where a career starts to become significant, has given him 851 runs at 47.27 per innings.

This is the biggest test of them all, though. Can he come to terms with Warne, whom he had never faced before the Brisbane Test and who will exploit his greenhorn nature mercilessly out of the rough? He plays with the bat rather than with bat and pad close together, which is considered to be a start, and waits for the short ball for scoring opportunities on the offside, his strong area off the back foot. He'll need more attacking options, though, as Trescothick had, if the leg spinner is not to throttle him.

How he handles the seamers is a similarly complex issue. He plays high pace well, standing tall, swaying out of the way if necessary or taking on the short ball by pulling downwards, unlike, say, Andrew Strauss. His first runs in Tests came from just such a confident stroke. It is the fast medium men who will trouble him unless he can line them up better in defence, hitting the ball to mid-off and straighter, in the manner of Matthew Hayden, using the full face of the bat.

Less anchoring of his back foot on leg stump would help. He is already working hard, he says, to come to terms with the attack from round the wicket, making sure that he maintains the same alignment to the bowler as he would were he over the wicket, and adjusting his guard accordingly. It is a work in progress, but if recognising the problem is halfway to solving it, then by the end of the series Cook's status surely will have risen. Earn the respect of the Australians and you are made for life.