England captain Alistair Cook is confident his side can build on the impressive performance against Sri Lanka at Lord’s when they travel to Leeds for the second Test.
England almost clinched victory in the first Test only for Sri Lanka to dig in and rescue a draw, much to the frustration of Cook.
However, the England skipper has taken the positives from the game and wants his players to show the same attitude and application at Headingley.
“We played really well there but that’s gone and we have to start again,” he said. “We have to earn the right to get into the positions we put ourselves into at Lord’s.
“We eventually dominated Sri Lanka but it took four-and-a-half days of really hard work to do that and I expect nothing different this week.”
Even though England played well at Lord’s, Cook was again in disappointing form with the bat, scoring just 17 and 28, and he is keen to rediscover his best form as soon as possible.
“It is a concern, it’s crucial that I get back to scoring as many runs as I can,” he added. “I’m doing all the hard work and I just have to score the runs in the middle. I saw a stat on my batting where the first ten or 12 games as captain I scored six or seven hundreds and in the next 12 games I scored seven 50s and no hundreds.
“So the real difference is I haven’t been converting those chances into big scores which I did at the beginning of my captaincy. That’s the frustrating thing for me and I’m doubly determined to lead from the front and try and get a score.”
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