Cook's tour over: what's on the menu now?

Alastair Cook's record tenure as England's captain began and ended with tours of India. In the first, in 2012, he made 562 runs in four Tests, including three patient centuries, founding substantial England scores and leading them from behind to a 2-1 triumph. Australia can only dream of such a result now.

In the last series, just concluded, England lost 4-0. Again, they made plenty of runs, three times getting to 400 in first innings. But India made more, many more. Cook made a hundred in a draw in the first Test in Rajkot, but was damned for lingering over it, rather than trying to force victory through a crack that for all he knew would not open up again. It didn't. Australia can only take note.

Cook, England's all-time leading Test run-scorer, was and is what he makes. It is the one certain credential he brought to the captain's job, that he would score runs and all else would - or ought to - flow from there. He did his bit. As captain, he averaged exactly what he did as a private, 46. Corrected for an opener's handicap, it is effectively 50. In his time as captain, Cook spent longer at the crease than any other batsman in the world.

Cook did not pretend to conjure up more than he had. The man from Essex was not quite Essex man, but nor was he Mike Brearley. Was it, by the many criteria against which captains are measured, enough? In the best of times, no one complained. He won two Ashes series and lost one, a balance of trade England would take every time. So would Michael Clarke.

He also won in South Africa and, as noted, India. These must be set against a loss to Bangladesh and home defeats by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, indignities that rarely befall Australia. As full-time captain, Cook finished exactly break-even.

But captains are remembered firstly by their results in landmark series. Mike Gatting won two of 23 Tests, but they were the two in a 2-1 win in Australia in 1986-87, and so he is fondly regarded still. Clarke lost two Ashes series, and it appears on his CV as an ineradicable stain. Assessed this day, Cook's record stands up.

Cook had no great flair as captain, but flair tends to be judged in the context of results, not as a driver of them. He had the dressing room's trust, more as mate than overseer. There was one exception. You could say that he "won" Kevin Pietersen in India in 2012 and "lost" him two years later, or that he was never Cook's to win or lose anyway, but an outlaw unto himself. Otherwise, Cook handled the job's vast pile of extracurriculars with equanimity.

At a level, the game did slip past Cook. He lost his place in the one-day team just before the 2015 World Cup, which hurt. In Test cricket, he still occupied and scored, but found that mere weight of runs was no longer enough; modern India would not be ground down by accumulation. Instead, Cook was; from all accounts, he finished the series exhausted. His abdication was timely.

Joe Root will succeed him, with the same qualifications: he is England's best batsman. Once, England might have made a more refined search - see Brearley, above - but no longer. When Root is confirmed, the top four batsmen in the world - Steve Smith, Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson and Root - will all be captains of their countries.