England vs India: Visitors’ fast bowling has come of age, feels Alastair Cook

Former England captain Alastair Cook thinks India’s fast bowling has come of age and offers the variety and depth they lacked all the years while touring abroad.

Cook, the highest run-getter in Tests for England and the sixth highest overall who has a realistic chance of toppling former great Sachin Tendulkar from the top slot, said ahead of the five-Test series against India, “India seems to have got a good variety of bowlers, especially pace bowlers, which is probably unusual. They have strength in depth in their pace bowling,” Cricket Country cited an agency report.

“Over the last couple of years – certainly in the last 10 years I’ve played them – they haven’t had the option of playing five or six different types of seamers. That’s different to what I have experienced in the past but we’ll see over the next six weeks,” thirty-three-year-old Cook who led England against India in a past few Test series, said. Cook has a fair success against India in Tests, winning the 2012-13 series in India 2-1 and the 2014 series in England 3-1. His side, however, was bulldozed 0-4 by India in the 2016-17 series played in the subcontinent.

Cook hails batsmen as well

The English opener also backed Shikhar Dhawan and Cheteshwar Pujara, the two Indian batsmen not in their best of forms, to do well in the upcoming series. Both Dhawan and Pujara failed in the one-off warm-up game that the visitors played against Essex at Chelmsford ahead of the Test series.

“With very good players, the form is certainly temporary. The reason they’re very good players is the number of runs they’ve scored in the past over a sustained period of time,” the left-hander said about the Indian batsmen.

Cook said the Indian batsmen’s ability to hit the form after a lean phase makes their team the No.1 side in the world. As for himself, Cook said he will start afresh in the upcoming series. The batsman, who has scored 12,145 runs in 156 Tests at an average of 45.65, has had good success against India at Edgbaston where the first Test will begin on Wednesday, August 1. Cook quit England’s captaincy last year to make way for Joe Root.

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