Need to bat away my big obsession

[King]

Graham Gooch is someone I've always looked up to and one aspect of his batting was that he had a knack of getting big scores. That is where I have room for improvement with England, says Alastair Cook. More... Need to bat away my big obsession By Alastair Cook Last Updated: 12:28am BST 15/06/2007 Graham Gooch is someone I've always looked up to and one aspect of his batting was that he had a knack of getting big scores. That is where I have room for improvement as I've not really managed a big score yet for England. I spoke to Michael Vaughan about it and he said I need to relax. Sometimes I perhaps tense up after passing a hundred and put pressure on myself by thinking I've got to go on and get a big one. But I just need to enjoy the moment more as that is the best time to be batting. It may sound obvious but you get big runs simply by batting and not letting other things get to you. Kevin Pietersen did just that at Headingley. He just kept going and before he looked up at the board he had 150. I know I can do it, I just hope I can do it sooner rather than later. At Old Trafford it was great to get another hundred and I was told afterwards that I'm the first Englishman to get six Test centuries before his 23rd birthday. Stats are interesting but they do not drive me. The one thing it does, I suppose, is put me in a different category as no other Englishman has done it before. A few people have noticed an improvement in my fielding and it is true I've been working very hard on flexibility and my lower back. I was quite rigid before but it has improved a lot over the past six months. I'm doing yoga stretching and there is a real emphasis on prehab rather than rehab now. It is making me move more freely and I've done a lot of catching work with Peter Moores. He is an excellent coach of catching and I've got my confidence back. I bruised my hands fielding for England last year and I lost a bit of belief. I had to wear massive pads on my hands and that hit my confidence. As a team we have had a think about where we want to go with our fielding. We are looking at the intensity we have and that has shown in the last three games. We are going to drop catches but we will limit those mistakes. We were indoors most of yesterday because of the weather but we did 45 minutes' catching and that can only be a benefit. We had a bit of a celebration after winning the series at Old Trafford. Vaughany got a bit of stick in the papers for enjoying himself too much and falling asleep outside a bar. But he was just a bit tired. It was a bit late for the old man and past his bedtime.