The response of the Britain overhang to the day’s last couple of overs said a lot. As Expansive and Ballance raised the stakes with a whirlwind of limits – and the last option arrived at his hundred years – Alastair Cook drove his players in a showcase of clench hand siphoning, arm-raising, genuinely expressive inclination. It uncovered the degree of Cook’s frantic to dominate a cricket game. It uncovered the profundities of his dissatisfaction, sadness, embarrassment and undermining. The Expansive and Ballance show focused an uncommon shaft of light into the hopeless world the Britain captain has possessed since November.

Perhaps he’d have been smarter to stay more poker-confronted

What we were seeing was fitting and deliberate shot-production, without a doubt, however under zero tension, with a major lead, in a home test against Sri Lanka. Cook was hollering endlessly as though near the precarious edge of recapturing the Remains. Maybe he shouldn’t give his contrary numbers so distinctive a brief look into his confidential damnation. Since the Brisbane test, Cook’s life has been a hopelessness – to a fair degree, deservedly – and it’s a wretchedness (to misrepresent Churchill) out of which he ought to now be put. He was blessed a future chief from the get-go in his test profession – recollect him being sent for that visit with Mike Brearley? – Regardless of having shown no specific fitness or longing for the gig at all.

Cook was fairly similar to a Dalai Lama, who is told as a little kid he’s the divinely selected individual, and needs to oblige it regardless of whether he enjoys it. Twenty tests in, and Cook shows not a bit more capacity or longing for the job than he could possibly do in any case. He seems as though he’s abhorring each moment of it. Everybody realizes he’s using up all available time; he realizes we know, and you can see it in his eyes. Just Cook’s mom would attempt to prevent the plainest reality from getting all: the captaincy is demolishing his batting.

Ponder his excusals in this match Cook looked diverted and messed up

The captain’s job has stripped his batting of the great pieces – effortlessness and fixation – and left just his heavy footwork and permeable strategy. What a differentiating figure he strikes from the naughtily lighthearted Gary Ballance, whose blamelessness and joie de vivre help one to remember better times. He played with all the easygoingness and newness of a let a man’s stockbroker and a leaving mentor mistreat him for a simple life.

Ballance was brilliant, and presumably he will win broad praises for arriving at his 100 years with a six. I love that he did that. It vouched for his balance, certainty and vision. The group horribly need that sort of chutzpah. Notwithstanding, I recollect that another player, who did very well for Britain yet plays no more, used to get a great deal of analysis for attempting to get to a hundred with a top dog. Indeed, he came from southern Africa so he probably been a pariah who didn’t show enough of Cook’s “Englishness”.