England skipper Alastair Cook is running out of

time, excuses and places to hide after India became the

latest side to expose his weaknesses with a thumping
victory at Lords to open a 1-0 lead in their ve-match
series.
His bright start to life as England captain at the end
of 2012 now appears like a dim and distant memory as
India skipper MS Dhoni carried on a trend started by
Australias Michael Clarke before handing the baton
on to Sri Lankas Angelo Mathews.
Cooks poor form and questionable leadership
have come under intense scrutiny with some critics
suggesting he should give up his place at the top of
Englands batting order and take a break from the
game.
Cooks malaise began with the 5-0 Ashes rout in
Australia, continued when a modest Sri Lanka eked
out a 1-0 series win in England earlier this summer
and was amplied by being forced to eat humble pie by
an average Indian attack in his own backyard.
The gravity of the latest defeat gains even more
perspective as it was carried out by a notoriously
poor-travelling India side that had not tasted an away
Test victory since beating West Indies at Kingston in
2011.
Cooks captaincy
in the Lords Test
provided further
ammunition to
detractors like Shane
Warne, a constant critic
of the Essex players negative and boring leadership.
The England skipper baf ed the fans and pundits
alike when he asked India to bat rst at Lords on
a greenish wicket and their pacemen proceeded to
dish out a barrage of inefective bouncers in the rst
session of the match.
Similarly surprising was Cooks decision to spread
the eld for Indias number 10 batsman Mohamed
Shami, that too when his premier bowler James
Anderson had the second new ball in his hand.
However, those frailties pale in comparison to how
one-by-one his batsman succumbed to Indias hook
trap after lunch on the nal day, bounced out with an
old ball by an erratic Ishant Sharma, who needed to be
goaded into bowling short by Dhoni.
Hes not scored a hundred in 27 innings, tactically
hes been all at sea for a while now, former England
captain Michael Vaughan said, summing up Cooks
situation.
The often outspoken former opener Geofrey
Boycott was even harsher in his assessment. Only
Alastair Cook, his wife and family want him to remain
as captain, nobody else, Boycott said.
Cook, however, says he has no plans to quit as of
now: It gets harder and harder It heaps it on me.
Until Im tapped on the shoulder, Im desperate to turn
it around. Im here until the end of the summer.
Unless, of course, he is forced to. And that looks the
most likely scenario now.
High time Cook
steps down
as skipper
P.O.Box 2888
Doha, Qatar
editor@gulf-times.com
Telephone 44350478 (news),
44466404 (sport), 44466636 (home delivery)
Fax 44350474
Chairman: Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah
Editor-in-Chief : Darwish S Ahmed
Production Editor: C P Ravindran
Gulf Times
Thursday, July 24, 2014
COMMENT
30
GULF TIMES
To Advertise
advr@gulf-times.com
Display
Telephone 44466621 Fax 44418811
Classified
Telephone 44466609 Fax 44418811
Subscription
circulation@gulf-times.com
2014 Gulf Times. All rights reserved
His bright start
as captain
now appears a
distant memory
In a year supposedly
celebrating 100 years of
commercial ight, the world
has witnessed two very
chilling incidents that have
taken the shine of the
centenary activities
By Updesh Kapur
Doha
A
lmost 14 years ago, the
world was rocked by an
unprecedented series of
attacks that shook the
foundation of the travel industry.
The basic freedomof travel and the
enjoyment of ying were taken away
by callous aerial attacks on America on
the morning of September 11, 2001.
Within the space of 77 minutes,
four passenger planes crashed in the
eastern half of the US.
Hijackers took control of the
commercial aircraft, steering two
into NewYorks World Trade Center,
one into the Pentagon US defence
headquarters in Washington DC, while
the fourth crashed into a eld near the
Pennsylvanian town of Shanksville.
Atotal of 2,977 people were killed,
including all 227 passengers and 19
hijackers, with the majority of deaths
in the twin towers of the World Trade
Center.
The events that unfolded on 9/11
were the worst terrorist attacks in US
history.
They changed the shape of travel as
we see it today. Not domestically, nor
regionally, but globally.
Collectively, airlines lost billions
of dollars in revenue as planes were
grounded for days after the attacks,
passengers were left stranded with no
ights departing the US or arriving
into the country. The knock-on efect
of aircraft and passengers in the wrong
place proved a nancial nightmare for
many airlines.
Stringent onboard security
measures and tighter airport security,
including a raft of behind-the-scenes
proling of passengers by authorities
and airlines were implemented
to reinforce safety as number one
priority.
It was a wake-up call for the
aviation industry and political leaders
in all corners of the world to adopt
a practical and unied approach in
tackling the threat of terrorism.
Huge amounts of money have been
invested, and continue to be, in airport
infrastructure with security levels
stepped up to newheights. Yet there
has also been an attempt to strike a
balance and bring fun back into the
ying experience when morale was at
an all-time low.
Fourteen years on, the global
aviation industry has been rocked
yet again with safety continuing
to be foremost in the international
arena.
The news agenda has been
dominated by two unprecedented
incidents that are changing the
aviation landscape. Aircraft
manufacturers, airlines and
governments have plenty to do in the
coming weeks and months.
In a year supposedly celebrating
100 years of commercial ight, the
world has witnessed two very chilling
incidents that have taken the shine of
the centenary activities.
Separated by four months, these
incidents involve the same aircraft
manufacturer, Boeing, and the same
commercial airliner, Malaysia Airlines.
The mystery disappearance on
March 8 of a Malaysia Airlines
Boeing 777-200 on a ight fromKuala
Lumpur to Beijing has led to numerous
theories about what happened.
All 239 passengers and creware
presumed dead. An hour after take-
of, the aircraft inexplicably did a
U-turn and headed south towards
the Indian Ocean well away fromits
intended ight path. Four months on,
there is no trace of ight MH370.
The air and sea search eforts for the
missing aircraft and those onboard
covering a wide expanse of ocean
has involved a multinational joint
approach.
The search eforts are already the
biggest and most expensive in aviation
history. The fear is the aircraft has
found its resting place in the southern
Indian Ocean and it could take
months, even up to a year, to trace the
jet in some of the deepest waters on
the planet.
Not happy reading for an industry
supposedly celebrating its milestone
100 years of commercial ight.
The airline industry has rallied
with calls to make aircraft monitoring
systems more robust in light of the
incident.
The presumed loss of lives would
have made it the deadliest incident
for Malaysia Airlines and Boeings 777
series, one of the safest aircraft in the
skies with a virtually clean record
until this year.
Sadly, events of recent days
involving another Malaysia Airlines
jet, also of the Boeing 777-200 series,
makes grimreading. Shot down at
33,000ft reportedly by pro-Russian
rebels in eastern Ukraine, all 298
people onboard were killed, making
this the deadliest ever incident
involving the airline and Boeings 777
programme.
The July 17 surface-to-missile
attack on ight MH017 en route from
Amsterdamto Kuala Lumpur, has left
the world in utter shock, anger and
disbelief with ramications across the
political spectrumas we have read,
heard and seen in the media.
The harrowing scenes at the
sprawling crash site of mangled
wreckage and bodies lying in the
baking heat for days, paint a dark
period in global aviation.
It marks yet another historic
moment for the wrong reasons.
Separated by 131 days, the
latest incident is the worlds
biggest crime scene again, not
one to acknowledge 100 years of
commercial flight.
Even if this is pure coincidence,
its never happened in history that a
ag carrier has seen two wide-body
aircraft disappearing in a fewmonths
with the loss of all passengers and
crew.
This week, we see some European
and North American airlines suspend
operations to Israels Ben Gurion
International Airport in Tel Aviv
after a rocket red in hostile territory
landed nearer the airstrip.
The shock waves of a newformof
missile terror whether deliberately
targeting commercial aircraft or not
has given rise to fresh thinking among
the industrys elite on howto make
travel safer.
Almost two months ago, more than
200 of the worlds aviation leaders
gathered in Qatar for their annual
summit at which MH370 became a
talking point.
Howcan an aircraft just disappear
and howcome the high-tech
aviation industry we have today with
sophisticated tracking systems and
satellite monitoring systems, fail?
Now, theres talk of whether it is
feasible to equip commercial aircraft
with anti-missile shields to counter
threats of attack through conict
zones.
The industry has plenty to think
about and actions to take quickly.
It is one of camaraderie, sticking
together in the interests of the aviation
community and the people it serves.
There are calls, in light of last
weeks shooting down of the Malaysia
Airlines aircraft, for the aviation
community to agree a response to
the incident, including a rethink of
potential threats posed by regional
conicts.
TimClark, president of Dubais
Emirates, the worlds largest
international airline by passenger
numbers, said the international airline
community needed to respond as one
entity, saying it wont tolerate being
targeted in regional conicts that have
nothing to do with airlines.
He urged for newprotocols to be
put in place with IATA International
Air Transport Association and UN
agency International Civil Aviation
Organisation (ICAO), leading the way
to see howthe industry should tackle
regional instability.
If you y East to West or vice-
versa between Europe and Asia, you
are likely to run into areas of conict,
said Clark.
We have traditionally been able to
manage this. Tripoli and Kabul were
attacked, Karachi was attacked and we
have protocols and contingencies and
procedures to deal with this, he said.
Following the downing of MH017,
he added: NowI think there will have
to be newprotocols and it will be up
to ICAO and IATAand the aviation
community to sort out what the
protocols have to be.
Some people say planes should
be armed with counter devices. That
will go absolutely nowhere. If we
cant operate aircraft in a free and
unencumbered manner without the
threat of being taken down, then we
shouldnt be operating at all.
This years incidents have plunged
the industry into intense self-
examination that is expected to lead to
changes in the way passenger aircraft
and the threats surrounding them
are monitored and assessed. No easy
answers.
But, for sure, a lot of talking ahead
by an industry all too familiar with the
challenges faced almost 14 years ago,
post 9/11.
Updesh Kapur is an aviation and
travel expert. He can be followed on
twitter @updeshkapur
Aviation under spotlight
for the wrong reasons
If we cant operate
aircraf in a free and
unencumbered
manner without
the threat of being
taken down, then
we shouldnt be
operating at all
Malaysian youths holding placards during a MH17 solidarity gathering outside
the parliament house in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
A childs toy who died in the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 lying in a field near
the village of Grabove, in the Donetsk region.
The crash site of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in a field near the village of Grabove, in the Donetsk region. The first bodies from flight MH17 arrived in the
Netherlands yesterday almost a week after it was shot down over Ukraine.