Former England players Moeen Ali, Alastair Cook engage in on-air sparring over captaincy style

London, January 8: Former England players Alastair Cook and Moeen Ali sparred on TV after the latter opened up about captaincy styles of Cooks and his successor Joe Root.

Joe Root is currently the Test captain of England while Cook retired after the series against India in 2018. Moeen too has retired from Test cricket last year to concentrate more on the white ball formats.

Cook has played 161 Tests for England and is the leading run-scorer for them with 12472 runs and made 33 hundreds. Moeen played 64 Tests for England and made 2914 runs with 5 hundreds and also picked up 195 wickets.

"Cooky would never give me throw downs. Rooty has a bit more of, I would say, an emotional attachment with the players. He probably spends a bit more time with the players," Moeen said during a chat at the BT Sport.

Cook responded in jest: "Are you just criticizing my captaincy?"

"I am a little bit, yeah," said Moeen.

Following is the full conversation:

Moeen: "They're both very different. I did do better with the bat under Cooky but with the ball I was better with Rooty."

Cook: "I was going to say, I never dropped Mo. So you might criticize me, but I never dropped you. How many times did Rooty drop you?"

Moeen: "That's true, but he (Cook) also batted me from one to nine in my first year of international cricket."

Cook: "I was giving him a chance. I couldn't work out whether he was a tailender or an opening batsman, so I tried to find the perfect role for him."

Moeen: "To go back to my point, Rooty was a little bit more involved with the players, in my opinion. Not that Cooky didn't care, but I think Rooty is a bit more arm-over-the-shoulder kind of guy."

Cook: "I'm not sure how to take this anymore. I've just come back from a nice holiday and I've walked straight into Moeen Ali off his long run."