Michael Vaughan expects England captain to step down

Alastair Cook is "very close" to quitting as England captain, believes former skipper Michael Vaughan.

Cook, 31, said he will "go home and do some thinking" over his future after the 4-0 Test series defeat by India.

"His body language over the last three matches was one where he looks like he might be thinking of calling it a day," Vaughan told BBC Sport.

However, Vaughan believes Cook is not certain to resign and said taking time to decide was the correct move.

England don't play again now till June I think it is, and so there is a bit of time for him to decide what he wants to do. He may have lost 2 more than any other England captain in a year with 8 losses as opposed to 6, but if he does step down, my thought's turn to who would replace him that could do a better job?

At the moment I don't think there is anyone so it really is going to come down to if he still want's it or not, and not a case of him stepping aside to let another one through that could do it better.

If the captain is lacking motivation, the players will lack motivation. If the results are bad, someone will appear to make better results because motivation is a big part of the game. Why don't you think there is no one better than Michael to be captain @pwarbi?

Vaughan is an idiot : Did a girl from Guyana really marry him ??

He should be  advocating no play on India surfaces...

ooopppsss....sorry that was the other Michael ....Atherton  :-[

Michael? Cook, I assume you mean? He's still the most respected man in the team as far as I know, and I don't think it is a lack of motivation from him or the players, I just think they have made stupid decisions at critical times, and while it's easy to blame the captain for that, a lot of the blame needs to be shouldered by the players.

When players aren't performing like he knows they can, he's going to get disillusioned with them and start to doubt his own abilities. As it stands though, I simply don't think there's another player in that squad that could do a better job.

LOL, I got the wrong name, I meant Cook yes. Bad decisions happen all the time, but it's worrying that you don't think there is a better player to fill out the position, when his bad decision had the negative results they did.

Ultimately, as the England captain then the buck does stop with him, but I'm positive that there are more people behind the scenes that are helping to make those poor decisions also. Team selection is done by a committee for example, and while Cook obviously will have a big say as to who plays, I'm not sure he ill have to much input into the actual squad so he can only choose from the best of a bad bunch.

Cook as been written off before and he's come back all guns blazing, but this time I'm not sure if he want's to have the pressure and especially if he thinks he's fighting a losing battle.

If the responsibilities are disperse by a bunch of people, it's kind of hard to point the finger at someone, but at the same time it's also hard to make things better. What's the point in having a committee deciding team selection, if the captain is the one deciding who is playing? Shouldn't the captain have the team selection powers as well?