Alastair Cook's Christmas wishlist

Given the demands of the calendar, it's probably good that Alastair Cook manages to cram both his birthday and Christmas Day into one of his rare days off. As he awakens as a fresh-faced 31-year-old on Boxing Day, the cycle begins once more.

Cook holds the Ashes, his captaincy is a secure as it has ever been as a result, and his batting has regained all of those unfashionable but monolithic qualities that first established him as one of the game's great, cussed throwback openers. He's even started hitting sixes, so perhaps he feels that most of his wishes have been fulfilled this festive period. But if he were to write a little note to put up the chimney or offer up some New Year resolutions, what would they be?

An opening partner
Obvious but true. The position has been discussed endlessly and the stats don't need rehashing but the parade of Cook's exes is beginning to look like something more than just bad luck. Alex Hales could hardly have been asked to take the job on in tougher circumstances, in South Africa against Steyn and Morkel. Debate over the position has tended to be ad hominem but perhaps it's time to look at the changing nature of the position itself.

It's hard to see too many more batsmen like Cook emerging, because the style of the game that they are emerging into has changed. England are churning out middle-order dynamos. Why? Well, those are the most attractive positions to bat in. Openers coming into the English game do a frenetically changing job that occupies two different mindsets. "Just play your natural game" no longer covers it (the sight of Hales being bowled leaving the ball demonstrates the trap). And the England hierarchy are aware that good results in first-class cricket have little bearing on how a player will fare in the Test match game. The gulf is now too wide, the standard of bowling radically different.

When David Warner became the first man to graduate from the new career path of T20 to Test matches, it seemed as though others would follow. In fact, Warner has proven himself to be freakishly good in his adjustment. And yet, if I was a young and ambitious cricketer making my way in the English game, I would make a beeline for the top of the order, because that's where the vacancies lie. The key, as Hales has suggested, is to score big when the opportunity comes, and to hope that the natural fragility of the attacking opener will become accepted as part of the pay off.

…and a No. 3
In an Alastair Cook dreamworld, Joe Root would move to the Kane Williamson role because he could flourish there for many years and it would open a place lower down for another young blade. Yet Root already bears the burden, with Ian Bell gone, of being the captain's one nailed-on run scorer, and it may be tempting fate to ask him to move right now. Hopes must lie with Nick Compton, who may not be a Cook favourite but who nonetheless shares the same ornery nature. The fates of Hales and Compton seem intertwined. If Cook and Compton are thrown together too early too often, old wounds may reopen as England crawl along.

A resolution to the Jos Buttler problem
Who is England's Test match wicketkeeper? There can be little doubt that Buttler sacrificed his batting during his first stint with the gloves. I think he is naturally an attacking upper-order player rather than a No. 7 and could potentially change Test matches in the way that Kevin Pietersen once did. It would take courage from both Buttler and the England management to turn away from the wicketkeeping job now, but perhaps he should. His talent is too rare to allow it to be fudged or frittered away down the order. It may take a while for a place to open up, but Buttler could be a star of the world game.

An end to bowling injuries
Perhaps more remarkable than the number of wickets Broad and Anderson are raking in - and there's an unanswerable case for them to be considered one of England's all-time great pairings already - has been their enduring fitness. Anderson's calf-tweak is unfortunate, and he can't continue forever, but the nightmare for Cook is both of them going down at once, because the younger bowlers have been far more vulnerable (not just an English thing - young fast bowlers generally suffer greatly with injury because bowling fast is unnatural). Sustained health for Steven Finn and Mark Wood is key in the longer term.

And a spinner (of course…)
What is Moeen's fate? Will Adil Rashid cut it as a Test spinner? Can Monty make an unlikely and heart-warming comeback? Will the county game and/or Loughborough ever produce another Graeme Swann?

All of the problems England face are easier to solve than this one. Perhaps there is no answer other than the current mix-and-match approach. Yet the thought of Rashid continuing to gain groove and confidence fills the sails of the heart.