I’m jealous that David Warner gets to 50 off 30 balls: Alastair Cook

Alastair Cook will go down in history as one of the finest Test openers to have graced the game. The former England skipper is the most decorated English batsmen in the history of Tests. The left-handed batsman holds almost every major batting record for England in the longest format of the game. He is England’s most-capped Test player and also captained the team in an English record 59 Tests.

While Alastair Cook enjoyed a glorious career in Test cricket, he did not enjoy the same success in white-ball cricket. And recently, the former cricketer admitted he found playing white-ball cricket difficult with respect to the longest format. Comparing his style with David Warner, Cook said he sometimes was jealous of the Australian opener who would score fifty in no time while it took him hours for the same.

It was a three-hour job for me

“I’m not going to compare myself to David Warner but sometimes I watch him bat and I’m jealous that he gets to 50 off 30 balls, it’s an hour into the day and he’s already sorted. I had to graft – if I was getting 50, it was a three-hour job most times,” Cook told Sky Sports.

“I always found one-day cricket harder. Everything when I was growing up was about Test and four-day cricket – you played T20 as a 13-year-old and you saw off the new ball, milked it around and you might have a little slog at the end,” he added.

Alastair Cook never really manage to settle down in white-ball cricket. He represented England in 92 ODIs and scored 3204 runs at 36.40 including five centuries and 19 fifties. His finest moment in ODIs came in 2013 when he led England to the final of the Champions Trophy at home. England had lost to India in the series-decider.

He retired from the game after playing 161 Tests. He is the leading run-scorer in Test matches for his country and the youngest player to complete 12,000 Test runs. His 33 tons in Tests is also an England record and Cook is also the first England player to take part in 50 Test victories. Overall, he scored a staggering 12,472 runs in Tests before retiring in 2018.

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