Cut Cook some slack'

Skipper keeps answering critics, says Trescothick

Cook: 14 fours off 142 balls

Marcus Trescothick says Alastair Cook's match-winning ton against Pakistan is proof the England skipper is cut out to lead the one-day team.

Captain Cook cracked 137 - his third and highest ODI knock - to put the tourists on track for a 130-run victory in Abu Dhabi in the opening game of the four-match series.

The left-hander played only three ODI games in two-and-a-half years before he was named skipper in May 2011, prompting some to question if he was the right man for the job.

But former England opener Trescothick said Cook's critics should back off as the Essex batsman is clearly adapting his game to the one-day stage.

"Cook has been brought up through the Test system," Trescothick told Sky Sports. "You see a lot of people go in the other direction these days - you've got the T20, then you are straight into the one-day stuff, like a David Warner or an Eoin Morgan.

"Cook hasn't played a massive amount of one-day cricket for Essex and it's really only in the last two years that he has really focused on trying to improve his one-day game.

"I know he went back to Essex last season and scored two hundreds in the games in between the one-day internationals and Test matches, so he is clearly trying to adapt.

"We keep throwing things at him and questioning his ability to adapt to these different conditions and these different formats and he keeps coming back with the answer every time.

"At some point we've got to cut him some slack and let him get on with the job that he is doing because he is doing a very good job."

Adapt

England, whitewashed 3-0 by Pakistan in the Test series, will get the chance to build on their one-day success on Wednesday when the teams meet again in another day-nighter at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium.

And Somerset star Trescothick believes that Cook's century - and the victory - will do wonders for the morale of the tourists' top-order.

"The team will take a lot from the way that Alastair Cook batted; they've been looking for a big hundred like that the whole trip," he said.

"They'll look at that and they'll talk to him about how he is trying to adapt and trying to improve his game because clearly it is working.

"As a batter you are always looking for that score yourself and you will see the likes of Eoin Morgan, Kevin Pietersen and even Craig Kieswetter and Samit Patel wanting to get going; they want to understand how to bat in these conditions.

"You don't want to get stuck down, you don't want to get stuck behind the eight-ball when you first come in; you want to be able to knock it around to take the pressure off yourself."

Learning

Trescothick's former team-mate and fellow Sky Sports pundit Nick Knight says he has nothing but regard for the way Cook continues to reinvent his one-day game.

"Regardless of the runs he scored, I loved the method that he used," said Knight. "We talk a lot about Alastair and the way that he develops quickly and the fact that he has got a lot of criticism about his position in the team.

"He hasn't actually played a heck of a lot of domestic cricket. Now he's playing more and more one-day cricket. He's learning so quickly; he's using the crease, he's making angles himself.

"Go back even a year ago and you could bowl to Alastair Cook. Now it's getting more and more tricky to bowl to him, whether you are Saeed Ajmal, whether you are Umar Gul.

"He's got some options; he's thought a lot about his cricket, he's worked really hard in the last couple of months. He knows it's going to be pretty tricky out here in these sort of conditions and he's come up with answers very quickly.

"If you take it down the line another year - and I honestly believe there is another five to 10 per cent left in his game if he starts using his feet to the seamers - he can go bigger and better and beyond where he is now."

Zone

Cook was named man-of-the-match in Abu Dhabi ahead of England seamer Steven Finn, who bagged 4-34 as Pakistan were dismissed for just 130 in 35 overs.

Finn snared the first four wickets en route to career-best ODI figures, and Trescothick said the Middlesex paceman will cause the home side problems for the rest of the series if he continues to bowl the same line.

"He has always been very quick," said Trescothick. "We've seen the speedo reaching 90mph on a consistent basis.

"I have faced him before and he's always bowled that sort of length where it flies up past your shoulders and it looks really good; it's quite effective at times and then he bowls the ones that are a bit fuller.

"What looks to me to be the biggest difference at the moment is the length that he is bowling. He is attacking the stumps.

"You don't generally see tall people getting that many lbws unless they bowl it really full and they hit them on the boot.

"But Steven Finn is hitting right in the zone, a little bit like Stuart Broad. They are both bowling that length; homing in on the top of off-stump, nipping back onto middle.

"You see the ball generally in this part of the world pitch and skid but first of all you've got to get it in the right place. That also brings the outside edge into play as well.

"It's so hard to hit. As a batsman who is trying to be positive in a powerplay situation that is really tough and you don't really know, unless you try to slog across the line, where you are going to score.

Source:http://www1.skysports.com/cricket/news/11979/7521123/-Cut-Cook-some-slack-