Root one of several captaincy candidates – Cook

‘It’s been a huge honour to be England captain and to lead the Test team over the past five years, ‘ Cook said.

“I think we all have regrets over how it was handled”, Essex left-hander Cook said of Pietersen’s departure from the England scene.

By the end of a crushing 4-0 series defeat in India, Cook was unusually relaxed precisely, as we now know, because he had already made his mind up on the captaincy.

Alastair Cook today gave his reasons for stepping down as England Test captain, admitting it was “an incredibly tough decision to make” after 59 Tests in charge.

“As much power as you have as the England captain, you don’t get the ultimate decision on that thing”.

The new partnership answered the questions asked by a Kiwi attack fast becoming one of the finest tuned in cricket: Lyth hit a maiden century in the second Test to coincide with Cook surpassing Graham Gooch’s record for most Test runs by an Englishman.

The Kevin Pietersen debacle was nearly certainly the toughest part of his England captaincy, and Cook claims he does in fact have regrets over how the situation panned out.

Cook announced that he was relinquishing the role yesterday and, while England will not conduct any formal interviews and have not yet spoken to Root or other candidates about taking over, they will announce his successor before embarking on a one-day tour to the West Indies on February 22.

“Those of us who were in India at the end of the year saw the look in his eyes”, he said.

Alastair Cook was today due to reveal the reasons he chose to step down as England Test captain.

“I’d say I’d take the job if I was going to be captain of the lot”.

He was also accused of using derogatory language to describe Strauss, who was England captain at the time prior to becoming director of cricket. At the time there was a Twitter parody account that was being run by a friend of Stuart Broad’s and the suggestion was that someone inside the England dressing room was helping craft tweets mocking him.

“Joe’s shown over the years that when the pressure’s on, he thrives on it, and I don’t think that the step up to the England captaincy would affect his batting either”.

Tributes for Cook’s efforts as skipper have flooded social media.

He did it all while, for the most part, continuing to score copious runs.

“However Kevin Pietersen, who was dropped from the national side by Cook in 2014, mischievously tweeted: “#BringBackKP”.

Cook scored more Test centuries than any previous captain and is England’s most prolific Test batsman with 11,057 runs in 140 matches so far.