This is to good not to share 🙂

From Alan Tyers blog yesterday

February 2016 news: England cricket captain Cook resigns after South African defeat

In an emotional but dignified press conference, Alastair Cook today resigned the England captaincy saying: “it was just the time was right for me to go. Kevin Pietersen has nothing to do with the decision.”

Cook had taken over the captaincy from Andrew Strauss in August 2012 and led the side to a renewed four-year period of success, but his own form had dipped of late. This, Cook insisted, was in no way related to the discovery that Pietersen had been drilling little holes in Cook’s bat, putting insects in his gloves and communicating with Graeme Smith via an onfield walkie-talkie to provide tips to get the England captain out.

Cook had brought Pietersen back into the England fold and had been rewarded with a series of brilliant innings in all formats of the game. Alone among the England top six, Pietersen had even managed to score a run in the subcontinent.

However, Pietersen’s recent insistence that he be given a personal dressing room away from other team members and, in the words of one ECB source, “a rider so extravagant that Mariah Carey would regard it as a bit diva-ish” has caused tension.

A recent incident where Pietersen demanded that Andy Flower “remove all the blue Smarties from the tube, as stipulated in my contract” had increased bad feeling in the camp, especially when the ECB took out full-page adverts in all national newspapers to publish details of their confidential agreement with the player. When Pietersen then refused to speak to anyone on the team unless he could communicate via an increasingly bizarre series of home-made videos, or via Skype from Delhi, it was clear that the ECB had to act.

Pietersen was left out for the recent series against Graeme Smith’s team and, although Cook once again impressed with his dignity, calmness, honesty, integrity and eyebrows, hitting the cricket ball proved to be more problematic. Like many of England’s batsmen, he failed totally as England were whitewashed. Tim Bresnan was dropped, but even that could not fix the batting, and in the end Cook felt that he had taken the team as far as he could.

The four-year Cook era will be remembered for a period of dominance over Australia in the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back Ashes series. Australia, reliant on the likes of Steve Smith, Michael Beer, poor Mitchell Johnson and variety of other nincompoops, found themselves overmatched again and again. Only Toadfish from Neighbours emerged from the most recent series with much credit, his new ball partnership with Dannii Minogue at least providing some measure of control before the erratic Johnson came on at first change. Questions are now being asked as to whether forcing Australia to play an Ashes series every six months devalues cricket’s most storied contest or, in the case of Johnson, constitutes a matter for the RSPCA.

Graeme Smith commented: “Of course it does not give me any satisfaction to see yet another England captain crushed under my heel and weeping like a little girl,” while cackling in a sinister manner and stroking the hartebeest’s jawbone he has taken to using as a cricket bat. The search now begins for a new England captain.