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:
“O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own—even more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education. I most sincerely wish ... that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)