The England Test captain Alastair Cook has been confirm as a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) squad for the Emirates T20 tournament and the Champion County match, both played ahead of England's three-match Test series against the West Indies in April.
The 30 year-old left-handed opening batsman was replaced by Eoin Morgan as the one-day-internationals (ODI) series England captain heading into next month's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Although shocked, Cook's dismissal was sort-of expected as he was in a poor form in ODI cricket matches for more than a year, most recently during the ODI tour in Sri Lanka last December, when Sri Lanka trashed England 5-2.
Cook will now take part with the MCC in the Emirates T20 tournament with Lancashire, Sussex and Yorkshire in Dubai on the 20th March, which will be followed by the four-day Champion Country match, the "annual opener of the English county cricket season". The Champion County match will start on the 22nd March and will played between the MCC and Yorkshire; this will be an exciting day/night match played with a pink ball to ensure that the longer game could be played.
The MCC is the most active cricket club in the world, which owns and is based at Lord's Cricket Ground in London. The club was founded in 1787 and it plays more matches than any other cricket club; with numerous home and overseas matches that the MCC play, the club is promoting cricket amongst schools, universities and clubs in the UK and abroad.
They will play their first match in the three-match Test tour of West Indies in the Caribbean on the 6th April, and the first of three tests will being in Antigua, a week later.
MCC have selected a very strong team, which comprises younger but also more experienced players. This will be Cook's seventh appearance for the MCC, his most famous coming as a 14-year old schoolboy in 1998, who went on to score a century. He will hope the spell with the MCC would help him to get into form and start scoring centuries again, as he had a run of 23 Tests without a century.
