In the original dustsheet. Red cloth binding with black title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

‘He is England’s greatest ever batsman . . . a hugely enjoyable book’ Daily Mail, SPORTS BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Watch. The. Ball. It’s just you. Standing at the crease. Waiting. The bowler is running. His arm swinging. The ball – 155 grams of cork, string and leather – is hurled at you. At 90 mph it travels 22 yards in under half a second. You can barely see it and you’ve got to be swinging your bat before it’s halfway towards you. Because you are in its path . . .

Alastair Cook, one of England’s most decorated players and highest test run scorer, knows what it is like to be your best under pressure. Yet at 33 he called time on his England career. Come with him as he relives the fraught hours on the pitch, the desperate lows and astonishing highs, the paralysing anxiety that can send the best back home and the extraordinary battle of wills with yourself, the opposing players and even those supposedly on your own side.

This is cricket as you’ve never seen it. The view from the inside . . .

LONGLISTED FOR THE TELEGRAPH SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AUTOBIOGRAPHY AWARD

‘Fascinating, timely. Delves into the psychological challenges of the game’ Guardian

‘Bracingly honest’ Times

Sir Alastair Nathan Cook CBE (born 25 December 1984) is an English cricketer and former captain of the England Test and One-Day International (ODI) teams. He is considered one of the greatest opening batsmen in test cricket. Cook is the fifth-highest Test run scorer of all time and leading run scorer for England ever. He retired in September 2018 and still plays for Essex County Cricket Club in English domestic cricket, while also working for the BBC radio programme Test Match Special, between his commitments for Essex.

Cook is England’s most-capped specialist test batsman and has captained the English team in 59 Tests, as well as in 69 ODIs. He is the leading run-scorer in Test matches for England, and the youngest player to score 12,000 Test runs (the sixth overall, and the only Englishman). Cook has scored a record 33 Test centuries for England and is the first England player to win 50 Test matches. A left-handed opening batsman (the highest-scoring left-hander in Tests), he normally fields at first slip.

Cook played for Essex’s Academy and made his debut for the first XI in 2003. He played in several of England’s youth teams from 2000 until his call up to the Test side in 2006. While touring in the West Indies with the ECB National Academy, Cook was called up to the England national team in India as a last-minute replacement for Marcus Trescothick and debuted, aged 21, with a century. He went on to score 1,000 runs in his maiden year and made centuries in his first Test matches against India, Pakistan, the West Indies and Bangladesh. Cook played a pivotal role in England winning the 2009 Ashes series, and, after deputising as Test captain in 2010 and then taking ODI captaincy full-time, in retaining the Ashes in 2010–11.

He was appointed captain of the Test team after Andrew Strauss’s retirement on 29 August 2012. Cook captained England to its first Test series victory in India since 1984–85. During the tour he became the first captain to score a century in each of his first five Tests in charge. On 30 May 2015, Cook became the leading run-scorer in Test matches for England, surpassing Graham Gooch (8900). After England’s 2016 tour of Bangladesh and India, he stepped down as Test captain. On 24 May 2018 during the first Test against Pakistan, Cook equalled Allan Border’s record for appearing in the greatest number of consecutive Test matches, with 153, surpassing it a week later in the second Test at Headingley. On 3 September 2018, Cook announced that his twelve-year international career would end at the conclusion of the series against India on 11 September 2018.

Cook was appointed MBE in 2011 and promoted to CBE in 2016 for services to cricket. In the 2019 New Year Honours, Cook was appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to cricket.

On the occasion of England’s 1000th Test in August 2018, he was named in the country’s greatest Test XI by the ECB.