Alastair Cook on cricket and farming: 'Nature, like international sport, can be simultaneously cruel and wonderful'

Former England cricket captain Sir Alastair Cook has written in his new book of how he spent the greatest years of his career mixing top-class sport with trips to his wife's family farm.

Alastair Cook and his wife Alice Hunt.
Alastair Cook and his wife Alice Hunt.
(Image credit: Getty / WireImage)
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Alastair Cook's autobiography — the rather prosaically-title Alastair Cook: The Autobiography — is published this week (Michael Joseph, £20) and The Times has got the serialisation rights.

At the weekend they ran an excerpt looking at his promotion to the national side's captaincy and the sacking of Kevin Pietersen, an interesting read — though the most surprising line in it, by some way, is that Cook was 'watching Homes Under the Hammer in T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops' when he took the call offering him the top job in cricket.

Monday's Times has a very different excerpt, however, with Cook talking about his love of the countryside. England's record run-scorer in Test cricket discusses how much he's enjoyed helping with the lambs at the family farm owned by the parents of his wife, Alice, and how he would 'love to become a full-time farmer'.

That ambition sounds all the more likely to happen since his alternative retirement options — chiefly coaching and commentary — require, 'an inordinate amount of time to be spent away from home and family. Since the countryside is such a draw, and I want to see my children grow up, I’m not sure how practical that would be.'

Alastair Cook and Alice Hunt drove away from their wedding in a tractor back in 2011.

Alastair Cook and Alice Hunt drove away from their wedding in a tractor back in 2011.
(Image credit: Getty)

Cook also marvels at the capriciousness of life on the farm.

'Nature, like international sport, can be simultaneously cruel and wonderful,' he writes, before telling the story of a ewe struggling to give birth to a pair of lambs, one of whom had died in the womb.

'Given the constricted space, I couldn’t untangle them. I was gutted, as no matter what I tried for the next hour or so I couldn’t help the other lamb.

'According to the vet, there was nothing I could do, so I reluctantly went to bed around midnight fearing the worst. I left for training early next morning, and couldn’t believe it when Alice called to tell me the ewe had lambed naturally and she and the lamb were fine.'

You can head to The Times website to read the entire piece, while Alastair Cook: The Autobiography is published by Michael Joseph on September 5, priced £20.

Alastair Cook: The Autobiography, published by Michael Joseph

Alastair Cook: The Autobiography, published by Michael Joseph, £20
(Image credit: Penguin)

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Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.

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