Alastair Cook steps down as former England cricket captain.

Alastair Cook steps down as England's former cricket captain.

It may have felt like the end of the world but England cricket captains have to move on. When Alastair Cook stepped down as the former England captain yesterday there was a sense that another generation of English cricketers had now given way to a new dawn, another chapter in the illustrious history of cricket's leaders.

During the 1970s the studious, professorial and towering intellectual who was Mike Brearley always looked like a captain, a wise, reliable, cultured and bookish man with a very learned perspective on the game. Throughout that remarkable 1981 Ashes Test series against Australia, Brearley resembled one of those military colonels constantly plotting the downfall of his opponents with a quiet but purposeful authority.

Roll forward 40 years later to the present day and Cook leaves the centre stage of international cricket with a safely established set of records, an untarnished reputation and bouquets of praise from far and wide. He was, too all outward appearances, one of the most successful and consistent of opening batsman but, by his own admission perhaps, would never have been regarded  as one of those showboating, barnstorming players who would take residence at the crease and just smash the bowlers to smithereens.

And yet when Cook once racked up 243 runs for England in a night and day Test match against West Indies you wondered whether England had found a batsman who was ideally suited for the big games and the big moments. How ironic that the West Indies would provide the opposition since they were the ones who had so richly decorated summer afternoons in England with the breathless bravura of their batting and utter disregard for convention.

For it was the West Indies who completely stole the hearts of the British sporting public with their immensely gifted batsmen and their frighteningly quickie bowling attack. Cook, you feel sure, must have learnt everything he hitherto known from the spectacular batting of Gordon Greenidge, Sir Viv Richards and the equally as notable Alvin Kalicharran.

Now captain Cook has brought down the curtain on his England career and it would be interesting to know what exactly Mike Brearley would make of the Cook leadership years. Cook always seemed assured, controlled, disciplined, capable of batting brilliance but never outwardly showy or pompous. He did what England cricket captains were meant to do. He carved out his innings intelligently, never knowingly threatened to throw away his wicket cheaply and never shied away from criticism of his methods.

This is not to imply that Cook was just plain boring, bland, unemotional or dull. Rather he was positive, hard working, perhaps too modest for his own liking and never one for the back page or indeed front page headlines. Cook for instance would never have dreamt of eye balling an umpire with a fierce and confrontational stare and there were no Mike Gatting moments.

Cook would never have flown a plane into the middle of nowhere before an important Test match but then Cook was no David Gower. Then there was the hilarious day when Andrew Flintoff got pleasantly drunk after England had regained the Ashes in 2005. You sense that Cook was a man who took his captaincy responsibilities far more seriously. There were no outrageous antics when Cook bounced out of the pavilion at Lords as skipper.

During his freewheeling 243 against West Indies Cook demonstrated the whole back catalogue of strokes that his predecessors Geoff Boycott and Denis Amiss would have been so jealous of. He slashed his cover drives square of gully and cover with a destructive finality, nudged shots off the back foot with a dismissive swipe that flew across the ground and directly to the boundary, and swept the ball off his back foot with a minimum back lift. Then he steered the ball comfortably wide of the slips as if no slip cordon existed.

There was about Cook a strategic mind so essential in a a skipper's armoury, an educated erudition that made a considerable difference when the final wickets were falling for England. At his county club Essex, Cook has been very much the stabilising influence on a team that once proudly had on its books John Lever, Graham Gooch and Keith Fletcher.

So it is that Alastair Cook takes his leave of cricket's greenest fields, a seasoned trooper who will now pack away his helmets and pads with the air of a man who knew that the game had been good to him. There will be a wistful yearning to once again  lead his men out at Lords, Edgbaston, Trent Bridge and Old Trafford.

When he settles down next to a wintry, roaring log fire of reflection, Cook will cast his mind back fondly to that stunning double century against the team who once dominated their sport for several decades. English cricket will now bid farewell to the man who knew all of the game's setbacks, pitfalls and the brimming potentialities that it can still offer in the future. The BBC Radio 3 Test Match special awaits you with eager anticipation. Captain Cook we salute you!