England’s one-day skipper Alastair Cook speaks to Tom Curran about the challenges of captaincy and adapting his game to limited-overs cricket ahead of the ODI series between England and reigning world champions India.
You proved some of your critics wrong by scoring at a healthy strike rate in the ODI series against Sri Lanka. How easy was it to adapt your batting style from Test cricket?
As I said at the time, when I first played one-day international cricket I didn’t know my one-day game as well as I knew my four or five-day game and there were a lot of areas where I suddenly got found out at international level. I probably didn’t have the array of shots that I needed to be able to score runs at the right tempo. But I went away for a couple of years at Essex and I worked my socks off to try and do that. Of course, there are times when it doesn’t always work well but I think that with the work I’ve done I can justify my place at the top of the order.
Do you think England will hold the psychological advantage after beating India so comfortably in the Test series?
There might be certain players you have that psychological edge over but they are such different formats that you can struggle in one and then suddenly the release of playing one-day cricket can stop you worrying about your technique or whatever it may be and form comes back straight away. I don’t think the Test series will have that much bearing. It’s been a tough start for us as a one-day side; to have the World Cup finalists followed by the world champions at home and then away but I was happy with the signs of improvement that we showed against Sri Lanka. We made a good start and we’re starting to make a little bit of progress in the areas that we need to.
England now have three different captains for each format of the game. Is the workload such that it is too much for one captain to deal with?
I think it certainly helps right now to have three captains. We’ve very new into the structure and have only had a handful of games each to do but I think that one of the big benefits is that the captain leads the team for a short period, gives all their energy for that short period of time, and then Broady, Strauss or myself take over and we can hit it equally as hard. Of course, it is still possible for one guy to do it all but you’ve got to pick who you think is the right person for the job at the right time and I think this is going to work out well for us.
Is it difficult to balance the here and now with planning ahead to the next World Cup?
I know what you’re getting at. I think you do have to look four years down the line but the only time you really focus on it is when it comes down to selection between two players and one of them definitely won’t be around in four years, then you go with the one that will be. The most important thing is that the side has to be winning but there is also that balance of trying to build for the World Cup. That means starting with little steps and trying to keep on improving so we can become a force to be reckoned with. We’ve done that as a Test side, but that’s taken a number of years.
Alastair Cook was speaking at a net session for Clydesdale Bank, encouraging involvement in grass roots cricket. For more information, visit www.ecb.co.uk/clydesdalebank40
