nice lad, but he's no leader One of the most worrying factors for England is that Alastair Cook does not have the right personality or tactical awareness for captaincy. I see everyone liking him but that is not a winning recipe for leadership. He leads by example with his batting but when that is failing there is nothing to fall back on He is the sort of nice lad you would love to have as your son-in-law. But I don't think he can tell anybody off and I cannot see him having cross words with anybody. There has to be a moment in time when every leader lets rip if people keep making the same mistakes. You would definitely listen to Brian Close or you would get a 'bunch of fives'. Maybe that is what is wrong with the England dressing room. It is too comfortable. They all feel they have a job for their cricketing life. On his knees: Alastair Cook has had a tour to forget. We are in a results business. There should be no such thing as a comfort zone. It does not work. Somebody at the England and Wales Cricket Board has to decide if Cook is the right man to captain the team. I don't think he is. I don't judge captains on whether they win every series. I judge my leader on whether he has fantastic tactical knowledge about the game. You cannot teach it. You are born with it. You have to have a feel for the nuances of cricket as the game changes and stay one step ahead of what is happening. There is no rule book. If you do not have the tactical gift then you need a wonderful personality that lifts people and gets them behind you in tight situations. I don't see Alastair having either of those traits. He leads by example with his batting but when that is failing there is nothing to fall back on. Like any cricketer, when you are doing well the faults do not show up. They show up a great deal more when you are losing. If your players are so much better than the other team then anyone can be a captain. But the real test is when you are under serious pressure and things are not going well. Everything you do is under the spotlight and questioned. That is when great captains come to the fore. Alastair is a clone of Andrew Strauss but you have to be your own man as captain. Find your own way of doing things. For so long, every time Kevin Pietersen has been interviewed he has excused bad shots by saying, "That is the way I play." In other words, we have to take it or leave it, and just live with the consequences. But recently he has had that much criticism about four out of the six dismissals before this Test that for the first time he batted responsibly for the team. Here he played two innings that were the opposite of how he likes to bat on a slow surface, and scored 120 runs which was nearly twice as many as any other England batsman in the match. It is quite clear he can do it if he uses his nous, and bats for the team and not his ego. That is the crux of the matter. He never looked in any trouble and showed the patience and concentration that I would have been proud of. So it is quite clear if he is to stay in the team then he has to adapt to the situation more often. The management have to tell him he cannot be a loose cannon always allowed to do his own thing. There will be opportunities when he can express himself and attack but not every time he goes to the wicket. Joe Root cannot carry on batting at No.3. His footwork has gone backwards. When he plays forward to the seamers, his front foot hardly gets in front of the batting crease which means he is still a long way from the pitch of the ball. He is not manoeuvring the ball for runs, and is getting very defensive against the seamers leaving him unable to score. The most worrying fact of all is he keeps playing and missing a lot of deliveries. At this level it should be a surprise when you play and miss the ball. His performance in the first innings here was the worst I have seen him play. He hardly middled a ball. England have two choices. They either leave him out until he finds some form and confidence back in England or put him down the order where it should be a little bit easier. It is staring everybody who knows anything about cricket in the face that Ian Bell should be batting at No.3. He has the technique, the talent and the range of shots to do the job. He cannot hide any more at five. In the history of the game, for all countries, the best middle-order players have batted at three or four so they can have the most influence on the game and make it easier for the lower middle order. If he plays any more stupid shots like that first ball in the second innings here then somebody, coach or captain, has to get stuck into him. That is unacceptable for a man who has played 97 Test matches. Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow played poor shots. But how the hell do you tell them off when it is plain they should do better, if experienced players such as Bell and Pietersen play such poor shots at crucial points in the series? The young players have to learn from the most experienced but they are not setting the example. For some reason the senior players are either not listening to the coaches or they are not being told off when they are irresponsible. Either way it is awful. Michael Carberry cannot carry on playing the same way or he will get the sack. He has only had two failures but made five starts without going on to make a decent score. In the second innings here he batted 81 balls for 12 so he spent a lot of time at the crease. There are aspects of his batting I like: when he defends on the back foot and when he leaves the ball. But he creates his own pressure by not being able to place the ball for ones and twos. He is waiting for a four ball all the time and he is not going to get very many. You get fewer still in Test match cricket because the bowlers are better and if you do not learn to work the ball around sooner or later you have been at the crease a long time for nothing and you play a daft shot to get yourself out. He is another batsman who plays forward but his foot does not go anywhere. He is still on the batting crease. He and Root need to sit down and look at the footage and have it pointed out to them that this basic failure to get their foot to the pitch of the ball is not good enough at this level. It is causing them serious problems.