Search for Alastair Cook’s opening partner heads into a fourth year

Moeen Ali’s failure leaves Alex Hales favourite to open with the England captain

Alex Hales (left) sits with Alastair Cook during a net session in Sharjah (Getty)

The third anniversary is imminent of a search that shows no sign of reaching a successful conclusion. On 15 November 2012 in Ahmedabad, western India, Nick Compton was anointed as Alastair Cook’s new opening batting partner.

The demanding nature of the task was clear. Compton was taking over from Andrew Strauss, who had retired as an international after 100 matches. In 68 of those, Strauss and Cook, England’s most durable and prolific first-wicket pair, had opened the batting together, putting on 4,711 runs.

It was perhaps difficult to expect that any alliance would be quite so profitable – Strauss and Cook had overtaken the total amassed by Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe in six fertile years between 1924 and 1930 – but the position has become desperate. Compton was merely the first of seven partners for Cook, seemingly chosen with care and then deemed to be unsuitable.

After the latest faulty venture against Pakistan, in which Moeen Ali was teamed with Cook with predictably moderate results, there seems certain to be an eighth when England visit South Africa next month for a series of four matches. The poor sap who is favourite for the job is Alex Hales, of Nottinghamshire, hitherto a limited-overs specialist at international level, who was selected for the Test party in the UAE.

Compton was followed by Joe Root, Michael Carberry, Sam Robson, Jonathan Trott, Adam Lyth and most recently Moeen. All have had their moments. Compton, Robson and Lyth all scored hundreds in their brief tenures, none of which lasted for more than nine Tests, Root was destined for other things.

Alastair Cook looks dejected following his side's series defeat (Getty Images)

Moeen (right) had never opened the batting in a first-class match before going out with Cook at Abu Dhabi three weeks ago. This showed a disregard for history. Previous attempts to convert middle-order batsmen into openers for the sake of expediency have also faltered. Mark Ramprakash, now England’s batting coach, could probably have told them that. He was the subject of a similarly failed experiment 15 years ago. Cook and Moeen managed 116 together on that first outing, but it has been downhill from there.

Moeen appeared to lack an opener’s temperament. Encouraged to play his own game, he was always one wafted drive away from an early departure. On reflection, he might have been wiser initially to harness the skills of self-denial he had displayed in an admirable rearguard action against Sri Lanka in 2014, when he batted throughout the last day at Headingley.

When we were No 1 in the world we had a really solid, settled batting line-up, but we are in transition at the moment

&#13; <p>England captain, Alastair Cook</p>&#13;

The continuing failure of the first-wicket partnership might not be directly to blame for the frailty of England’s middle order, but it cannot help. England have collapsed alarmingly six times this year, from Bridgetown to Sharjah, and on only one of those occasions has the first wicket put on more than 40.

“It is a concern,” Cook said after England’s 2-0 series defeat in the UAE. “I don’t think we have quite found it. When we were No 1 in the world we had a really solid, settled batting line-up, but we are in transition at the moment.”

Trevor Bayliss, England’s coach, also sees the apparent lack of logic in asking a non-specialist in Moeen to do a specialist’s job. His reasoning, apparently sound, is that there is nobody out there in the shires forcing the selectors’ hand with weight of runs.

But Robson, in 2014, was picked precisely because of his county form the previous summer and then a timely hundred early in the following season. That applied, too, to Lyth, scorer of seven hundreds for Yorkshire in 2014, who was a popular choice last summer but not quite up to it when Australia came to town.

The selectors are running out of places to turn if they decide to end Moeen’s run, which was also partly connected with trying to squeeze two spinners into the side in the UAE. Pragmatic though this might have been, the possible effect on Moeen’s bowling, still a work in progress, had to be considered. He was asked to perform two vital roles while his present skills might not have been up to either.

Hales, who would be unlucky not to be given the next bash having come this far, is a mercurial player. A one-day dasher and a clean, uncluttered striker of the ball, he does not immediately appear to have the sort of method which combats the new ball in Test cricket. But he averaged above 50 for Notts in the Championship last summer, starting and ending with a flourish.

If he comes off it will be spectacular, but on the third anniversary of an increasingly forlorn quest, the selectors may think back to where they started.

Compton, who remains a consistent performer for Middlesex, was a determined, driven, sometimes anxious figure. He and Cook shared three hundred partnerships and three above 50 in their 17 innings together. It begins to look like a golden age.