Cook confident of good show against New Zealand

Alastair Cook has been an important batsman for England. He is a brilliant player in Test Cricket. He handles the new-ball with caution and also plays the reverse-swing skillfully. But he has to take the blame for England’s debacle in New Zealand. His batting has not been as good as before in the recent Test matches, but he has shown a lot of character. Cook has been the first captain to score five Test centuries in his first five Tests as captain.

He has a significant task at hand following their poor performance in New Zealand. Cook’s captaincy has been delightful to watch. He has been aggressive in nature. He has a great opportunity to lead England to a good series against a mediocre New Zealand. The conditions in England would be similar to that of New Zealand. But the Black Caps would find it hard on bouncy wickets in England. England, therefore, have a good chance of performing well. Cook would be disappointed if his team fails again to New Zealand.

“I have captained nine Test matches now and all of them have been away, so I’m looking forward to doing that at home,” Cook told. “Obviously, Lord’s is the first one for New Zealand; it’s a great place to play cricket so to captain there…hopefully we can cap it off with a good performance. Hopefully we can get our standards back to where we were in India and other times in the recent past.”

“The work ethic and the drive in the team has always been there, with Andy Flower and Ashley Giles there’s no room for not setting us high standards – they are always pushing us.”

He also believes that his leadership qualities are developing all the time and looks to enjoy the success that he did under Andrew Strauss. “I’ve learnt a great deal,” added Cook. “I think you only really learn when you are actually doing the job. You can seek as much advice as you can before you actually takeover, but that first-hand experience I think is the most important thing.”

“It’s always going to be different – I can’t try to be like Andrew Strauss and the team can’t try to treat me like Andrew Strauss. He was obviously a fantastic captain and a fantastic leader and he did a fantastic job for the team, it’s just the team does evolve in a slightly different way.”

It will be a hard work for Cook as Pietersen will not be featuring in the Test Series. He has to toil hard with the young cricketers, who aren’t exposed to these kinds of circumstances. It will certainly be a challenging series for Alastair Cook.