Cook the rough diamond
Will
25-Feb-2013
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After Ian Bell and Alastair Cook's superb hundreds on the second day against Pakistan, Derek Pringle argues in the Daily Telegraph that it is Cook's which is the more valuable.
A tall left-hander, Cook can often look ungainly coming forward with that lunging front pad of his, though there is a swan-like transformation when he is fed anything wide of his off-stump, something Umar Gul and Mohammad Sami seemed happy to do. Experts talk of people possessing good hands in sport. Cook's are exceptional ones that, when given room to express themselves, can cut, drive, caress and feather the ball with a thrilling ease into the arc between extra cover and third man.
For a 21-year-old, Cook's overriding strength is to have a uniquely organised mind, one not easily seduced by thrills and spills, even on a cricket field. Perhaps a life that has experienced little beyond cricket and school lends itself perfectly to focusing on scoring runs.
And in the same paper, Cook was clearly delighted with his innings although envious of a certain someone's power...
When I was out, Kevin Pietersen said: "I wish I had your patience." I replied: "I wish I could hit it as hard as you." I have to bat long periods of time to score my runs - that's just the way I am - but I am usually able to block out all the peripheral stuff and just watch the next ball.
In The Guardian however, Steve James remarks of Bell's elegance and orthodoxy:
He looked confident enough from the off yesterday, even if his arrival at the wicket at 288 for four coincided with the crowd's first Mexican wave. That usually denotes more than a small degree of ennui with the cricket. Bell's immediate on-driven four off Umar Gul altered that. For all the calmly crafted diligence which had gone before, we were now witnessing England's most aesthetically pleasing batsman, a touch player to whom timing is a given extension of his manner - "Atherton with shots" as was once mischievously observed of him.