Keaton Jennings is back for the sequel as the former captain’s opening partner against Pakistan on Friday, which may be a timely moment for a word in the Chef’s ear

For the English cricket fan, May is supposed to bring balm. However badly they have wintered, England can usually be relied on to reassemble at Lord’s and win the first Test. Not this time: now is the spring of our discontent.

Ed Smith, still settling into the driving seat, has already made a screeching U-turn. Out goes Mark Stoneman and back comes Keaton Jennings, the player Stoneman replaced last summer. It is another chapter in a saga that began as soon as Andrew Strauss retired in 2012: The Curious Case of the Half‑Hopeless Opener.

England drop Mark Stoneman for Keaton Jennings after Pakistan defeat Read more

In 72 Tests since, Strauss’s old partner, Alastair Cook, has been ever-present, as captain or former captain. He has walked out to open with 12 different people. To paraphrase Graham Gooch’s famous line about New Zealand’s bowlers, it’s been the World 2nd XI at one end and Britain’s Got Talent at the other.

There have been blockers (Nick Compton, Haseeb Hameed), dashers (Alex Hales) and jokers (Ben Duckett), young bucks (Joe Root, Hameed) and old salts (Compton, Michael Carberry, Stoneman), Yorkshiremen (Root, Adam Lyth), Lancastrians (Hameed), ex-Aussies (Sam Robson) and ex-South Africans (Jennings), not forgetting a doomed comeback by Jonathan Trott and a misguided promotion for Moeen Ali.

Traditionally, when a batsman enters the Test arena, two destinies beckon. Either he sinks, like Gooch in 1975 (0, 0, 6, 31, instant discard), or he swims, like David Steele two weeks later (50, 45, 73, 92, overnight cult figure). The curious thing about Cook’s partners is that most of them have sunk and swum. The first man in, Compton, ground out two hundreds in New Zealand; the second, Root, made a lovely 180 against Australia at Lord’s. Only Trott and Moeen flopped altogether. The rest have made several starts, managed a 50 or two, flirted with solidity, then faded away.

A struggling opener can easily become a walking wicket, as Heino Kuhn of South Africa and Jeet Raval of New Zealand have recently shown against England. But that has not happened to Cook’s sidekicks. Together these 12 hungry men have an average of 27, compared to 43 in the same period from Cook, and 37 by the opposition openers. So the price in runs has not been particularly high. It is more about security: the house is built on sand.

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When the same thing keeps happening to different people, the prime suspect has to be the system. George Dobell of Cricinfo has just said as much in a tirade at the way the County Championship has been squeezed into the soggy bits of the season, where seamers rule and openers flounder. Nick Compton read it and tweeted: “The most sense I’ve read in years!”

Yes, the schedule is insane. But there is another factor, sitting where, as Orwell said, things are hard to spot: right under our noses. If an old friend had had 12 partners in six years in real life, we would not be blaming them. The analogy, of course, is imprecise. But could it be that Cook, so admirable in many ways, is a tricky co-pilot?

You wonder if his partners are intimidated by his records – most Test runs for England, most consecutive Tests for anybody as of Friday. Or by his methods – doing his own thing, batting in a bubble. You wonder if his very calmness makes a beginner more twitchy, if his resilience and concentration are somehow sealed off, unable to infect the guy standing 20 yards away. Cook, oddly for an ex-captain, seldom looks to dominate, to hit bowlers out of the attack or force them to bowl differently. The man doesn’t even sweat: how would that make you feel, in your sodden shirt, at the Gabba or the Wanderers?

When he played one-day internationals, Cook fared best with an opening partner who was his polar opposite – Kevin Pietersen. The nearest equivalent now would be Jonny Bairstow or Jos Buttler: both are senior, right-handed and dynamic, and one could open while the other kept wicket. This seems the most promising way to change the script.

But first we have Cook‑Jennings, the sequel. That old mate of ours is suddenly back with the girlfriend before last, and we’re trying to remember how rude we were about her. When England bat at Headingley the spotlight will be on Jennings and whether his rather wooden movements are better oiled now. The commentators will not be mentioning Cook so much, but they should be.

Ed Smith, who loves a good chat and a lateral thought, would do well to take Cook aside today and say something such as this: Alastair, love your work, that 70 was tremendous, worth a hundred. But we need you to do more than open the innings – you’ve got to run the show. You’re the Chef, with Keaton as your apprentice. Get the best out of him, or get out of the kitchen.