Does Alastair Cook deserve to be booted off from captaincy?

Former cricketers such as Michael Vaughan and Geoffrey Boycott also got into the mix to criticize the team's performances pointing out countless things that were wrong with the visitors. Yes, England's performance has been abysmal in the tour, but is it fair enough to put all the blame on Alastair Cook?

First of all, let's look at how the team has responded to the captain's call in the series. In batting, there have been just few notable performances from the likes of Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes and of course England's most consistent batter in the last three years—Joe Root. Moeen Ali and Cook's hundreds at Rajkot and Jos Buttler's fighting 76 in the fourth Test at Mumbai are the honourable mentions. Apart from these few good knocks, there were no signs of the England batsmen working as a unit. And if we looked at England's batting coordination in the series, they have put up just five  century partnerships (if we are being generous by rounding off two 99-run stands as century partnerships) with the three of them coming in the first drawn Test at Rajkot.

Comparatively, the Indian tail-enders have had better understanding among themselves, putting up five 50+ partnerships and one massive 241-run partnership involving rookie Jayant Yadav, across eight innings in this series.  It is mostly up to the captain to devise the gameplan with the coach for each session and relay it to his teammates before they go out in the middle. And so far, Cook seemed to have failed in explaining the plan to his batsmen properly or did not have one to go with in the first place.

But the biggest issue with England's bowling is the failure of their spin department. In all the four Tests, there was hardly a day where the spinners were unable to show any impact. The English spinners have failed exactly were the Indians have come out trumps.  A simple example is Adil Rashid's spell in the fourth Test at Mumbai. While Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jayant Yadav constantly bowled in the rough patches around the crease to rip through the England batting, Rashid, being the only genuine spinner in the side, did not care to look for those dusty areas until the end of the second day. And by the time the Yorkshire leggie started bowling in the correct areas, Virat Kohli had spent enough time at the crease to understand his length and took him to the cleaners. Cook had to finally turn to Joe Root to make some impact which pointed out to England's flaws in selecting the right starting XI.

Adding to this, his decision to over-burden Rashid on the deteriorating Wankhede pitch was a terrible decision. The 28-year old bowled a spell of 28 straight overs which resulted in total exhaustion while also made him predictable for the Indian batters. Though the selection of Keaton Jennings in place of injured opener Haseeb Hameed proved to be good, England have clearly missed out on at least 70-90 runs by going for Ben Duckett instead of all-rounder Chris Woakes in the first two Tests.

Even with the DRS, there was a complete lack of judgement in Cook's reviews. It was evident when he went on to review a supposed edge off Jayant Yadav in the fourth Test. After listening to Ben Stokes, who was positioned near the gully region, Cook did not seem to notice that the bowler of the ball James Anderson was not confident about using the review. This shows that there is some serious miscommunication between the players and the captain.