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, early, life and/or education:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“Just as we need to encourage women to test lifes many options, we need to acknowledge real limits of energy and resources. It would be pointless and cruel to prescribe role combination for every woman at each moment of her life. Life has its seasons. There are moments when a woman ought to invest emotionally in many different roles, and other moments when she may need to conserve her psychological energies.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)