Cook confident he and Trott have the capability to score quickly
Published:Stuart Broad suffered a tortuous start to his career as England’s Twenty20 captain, but Alastair Cook is under even more pressure as England begin their one-day international series with Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankans are a much stronger ODI team than they are a Test team, and England know they’re in for a battle against the World Cup finalists.
England were dominated in their last ODI series with Australia and a poor performance in the World Cup saw them exit at the quarter-final stage to Tuesday’s opponents, and Cook is under a serious amount of pressure with many questioning his captaincy of the one-day team.
The Essex opener has never been one to score at a quick rate and the heavy defeat in Saturday’s Twenty20 match leaves Cook in the unenviable position of turning England’s one-day fortunes around.
Cook looks likely to open with Craig Kieswetter with Jonathan Trott coming in at number three followed by Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan.
In his column for the Metro this morning, Cook says he has no doubts both he and Trott can score quickly and is backing Trott to shine in this one-day series England are 4/7 to win.
Trott is 3/2 to score a half-century in Tuesday’s opening game of the series and with a batting average of 55.65 from his 25 ODI starts, the stats would certainly suggest Trott is capable of scoring big.
Whether he scores quick enough to put Sri Lanka under pressure is up for debate and we’ll certainly find out over the coming weeks, but for the meantime Sri Lanka look the value to win Tuesday’s match at 6/5.
England are still unsure of their best one-day team and after being well and truly dominated by Sri Lanka in the World Cup, and in Saturday’s T20 game, confidence is high in the Sri Lankan camp and their batting strength should pull them through.
