England captain Alastair Cook will sit out the forthcoming one-day series in the West Indies as he prepares to hold talks with senior team management over the “route forward” following a miserable tour of Australia.
Cook’s absence from the three ODIs in the Caribbean is a move calculated to give Twenty20 captain Stuart Broad and limited-overs coach Ashley Giles the time to prepare for the World T20 in Bangladesh starting in March.
Instead, Cook will spend the next few months recuperating from defeats in the Ashes and in the subsequent one-day matches by an aggregate of 9-1.
His latest setback came in the form of a five-run defeat in the fifth and final match in Adelaide which capped a 4-1 series loss. The visitors had restricted Australia to 217-9 with a tight bowling display, but themselves ended up all out for 212.
When asked if he would be on the West Indies tour, Cook said: “No I won’t be. The Twenty20 guys have got their World Cup in Bangladesh and I think we see it as a great six weeks for them to start building the team. They’re never together very often and it gives them, and Broady and ‘Gilo’, time to really have six weeks together to build for Bangladesh.”
Cook is looking forward to some time away from cricket, before discussions begin over how to rebuild following the disappointments of the winter.
“It has been a challenging tour for me. I can’t not say that,” he admitted. “It’s been a real tough tour for me. I am not exhausted, but I’m ready to put the pads away for a couple of weeks or so.”
While Cook will fly home in order to gather his thoughts on the last few months, a number of England players will remain Down Under as their are still three Twenty20 matches lest to play against Australia.
The first of which takes place in Hobart on Wednesday, before heading to Melbourne on 31 January, with the final match of a long stint in Australia taking place on February 2 in Sydney.
