Decision to sack Cook 'better late than never' - Dravid

Former India captain Rahul Dravid believes England's decision to axe Alastair Cook as captain so close to the World Cup was a case of "better late than never". Dravid was speaking on Contenders, ESPNcricinfo's preview show on World Cup 2015. Dravid's co-panelist on the show, former South African captain Graeme Smith said Cook could never shed the "baggage" of poor form that he carried from England's disastrous Ashes campaign in Australia in 2013-14.

"They tried to give him every single opportunity to try and correct that because they believe he was the right leader to take England into the World Cup," Dravid said. "But his form was not good enough to warrant a place in the playing eleven. There were others exciting players. It was almost changing the way England plays cricket to suit one person and try and get him into the playing eleven. They hoped that he would get into good form. But once it did not happen, they made the change. Better late than never. It would have been really difficult for them to go into a World Cup with the captain in such poor form."

Smith drew on his own experiences as captain when battling poor form as one of the team's frontline batsmen. "For me it was never was about selectors, it was always about team-mates," he said. "You are asking a lot from your team. You're trying to get the best out of your team consistently. It's very important that as a captain you perform yourself, that you lead by example - often that benefits your leadership."

Both Dravid and Smith said they thought the ECB cutting ties with Kevin Pietersen was not the best decision for the team. Smith was of the view that England's mindset to playing the game was completely different to Pietersen's, and said it may have been the reason for the relationship to rupture. However, he said, Pietersen still was a "match-winner".

"You always look at how that player was managed," Smith said. "Did they have a lot of discussion? Did they give him an opportunity to put things right and did he not listen? For me, I think it was a mistake. He was one match-winner in the team. What it boils down to is the mindset of the England team. It is very stats driven, lots of sheets of paper, trying to decide what's the best way to run a team, the best way to play cricket. And it sort of lacks the instinctive style of play that KP has. They probably need more of that in cricket and less of the sort of run-of-the-mill, tick-the-boxes."

Dravid said: "In my opinion they made that decision a little too early because he's been a great player. And irrespective of what your feelings are about him, he's the kind of player that can impact a game, change a game. I mean, England's one big ICC tournament success in the recent past has been the World T20 and Pietersen played a big role in that. He's one power player, one X-factor that England had and I thought they would have tried their best [to keep him playing]. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't and we will never know the real story. But once they went down that path to change it at the last minute was never going to happen."