Captaincy takes its toll on Alastair Cook

Despite turning up late in the Old Trafford gloaming last week, the England cricket team insist they pay no heed to weather forecasts. There must have been an explanation, then, beyond the threatening front skidding across meteorologists' charts in the direction of Chester-le-Street, for Alastair Cook's skittish cameo of an innings yesterday.

Rather than trying to finish things long before the clouds intervened, he must have been doing something else. Like trying to hit himself back into form. This has been an odd series for Cook.

The satisfaction of retaining the urn in his first Ashes encounter as England captain will have been tempered by concerns about his own contribution. Sure, his bucket-like hands have been in full working order in the slip cordon. True, he is ahead of his counterpart Michael Clarke in the use of the Decision Review System (and how he needed to be yesterday when the unerring eye of technology helpfully negated the doddery incompetence of the on-field umpires). But Cook is a man who defines himself by his batting. And so far in this series, his batting has been well short of the dazzling peak it attained in his early days as captain.

Yesterday, what we saw was a fine batsman struggling to make sense of his dip in form. In the first innings here in Durham, he had been scratching and scrabbling around without point or purpose. When Geoffrey Boycott criticises you for being unnecessarily pedestrian, then you know you have a problem. So when he walked out with Joe Root after Australia had been efficiently dispatched in the morning session, he appeared determined to put such negativity behind him. Like a golfer who had remodelled his swing overnight, he came out with a new modus operandi. In his first over he clipped a ball from Ryan Harris off his pads to the boundary; in the next he squirted one from Jackson Bird through the slip cordon.

It was an aggressive signal of intent. His aggression sent a message back to the dressing room: there can be no hanging around if this Test is to be won. The trouble was, his form has dipped sufficiently to undermine such a radical departure from his standard approach. He was trying to accelerate but velocity is limited when the ball refuses to find the middle of the bat. Try as he might, no one could accuse him of bullying the opposition. His fidgety impatience appeared to be catching.

After Root was dismissed by a beautiful Harris seamer, Jonathan Trott joined Cook in a nervy quickstep. Where once his entire working method was to bore an opponent into submission, Trott too set out as if involved in the Twenty20 finals day. As the pair played so palpably against type, flashing and nicking, it was like watching a couple of operatic tenors trying to rap.

You knew it could not last. The captain was the first to go, thrashing inelegantly at a wide ball from the admirable Harris and spooning a catch to Brad Haddin. Cook started in the job as if determined to buck the trend evident in the experience of Michael Vaughan and Andrew Strauss which insisted that the England captaincy inevitably erodes an incumbent's batting. He was imperious in those early days, as close to a banker as it is possible to be in a game as fickle as this.

But this series, the weight of the job appears to be taking its traditional toll. The relentless public duties of the Ashes have dimmed the brightness in his eyes. When the microphone is thrust under his nose, you can almost see his shoulders sagging. Way too well brought up to be rude, it is nonetheless evident in his body language he would rather be concentrating on his net practice than addressing the same questions for the 40th time. In this era where every sponsor has to be schmoozed, every broadcast paymaster accommodated, the captain's life is not his own.

Pre- and post-match press conferences, interviews with the TV people, if you don't mind Alastair just a word with the chaps from the radio: when you are in form, such responsibilities are less onerous. In fact, they can be a useful distraction from the brooding intensity of the batsman's calling. But when out of form, they are the last thing you need. They induce a sense of guilt, a worry that you need to be doing something more productive.

Cook is a captain who leads from the front. He is not gung-ho, not big on Henry V oratory, chirpy back slapping and on-field chivvying. His leadership is described by personal performance. It might be politic to say it is the team that matters, but he knows his effectiveness as captain is diminished if he is not batting well. How thankful he must be that he has Ian Bell - unlikely ever to be emasculated by captaincy - in his team.