Alastair Cook - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Born in Gloucester, Alastair Cook is one of several players of mixed Anglo-Welsh heritage to play for England; his mother Stephanie is a teacher from Swansea, while his father Graham worked as a BT engineer as well as being a village cricketer. Cook is a keen musician. By the age of eight, he was learning the clarinet, and joined St Paul's Cathedral School in London, an independent school connected to the cathedral, as a chorister, where he boarded under a rigorous schedule of rehearsals, whilst also learning the clarinet. Cook later claimed the amount of focus and concentration required to keep practising while undergoing regular school hours helped with his batting. During his summer holidays, he would play cricket for Maldon Cricket Club, and by the age of 11 he was already playing for their adult side on the Third XI. He played sporadically for them over seven years, with an average of 168 in his final year at a club of which he is now an honorary life member.

Cook's musical flair led to him being granted a scholarship to Bedford School, an independent school in the county town of Bedford in Southern England when he was 13, also as a boarder. While being educated in Bedford, he also learned to play piano and saxophone. However, music was soon eclipsed when the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) came to play against the Bedford XI. The visiting side were a man short and drafted the 14-year-old new boy to play against his school; Cook scored a century. Over the next four years, he hit 17 centuries and two double-hundreds, to total 4,396 runs at an average of 87.90, captaining the cricket team in his final year under coach Jeremy 'Boris' Farrell, as well as being president of the music society. He also gained three A-Levels and nine GCSEs in his time there. In his final year at Bedford, in 2003, he scored 1,287 runs for the school, including two unbeaten double-hundreds, averaging 160.87 to take the school record. After his international success, Cook returned for an Old Boys match at Bedford in 2008, playing for the HM Ultimate XI.

Read more about this topic:  Alastair Cook

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:

    In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.
    M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)

    Peasants are a rude lot, and hard: life has hardened their hearts, but they are thick and awkward only in appearance; you have to know them. No one is more sensitive to what gives man the right to call himself a man: good-heartedness, bravery and virile brotherhood.
    Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)

    The experience of the race shows that we get our most important education not through books but through our work. We are developed by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing else.
    Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)