Alastair Cook

Learning on the job as England captain is hard.

The biggest thing was probably a better understanding of the mental side of cricket and also the technical challenges I have in my game. Those two things happened in a very short space of time which changed me as a player.

No matter how much cricket you have played you are always learning.

It is frustrating when you go all that way, you train, and you just don't turn up. It does happen. If you play 100-odd Test matches, there's going to be little periods when you don't score the runs.

When you give up something as big as playing for England there are going to be moments when you miss it.

I suppose you could say I was always having to defend my style of captaincy. I did get a lot of criticism - some of it justified, other times as part of a tactic.

If you play 100-odd Test matches, there's going to be little periods when you don't score runs, and I've always managed to turn it around.

Throughout my career I have done it my way and used my stubborn streak. I thought the best way to captain was to shut out all the noise - I did it with my batting and thought 'that has served me well, so why change it?'

My stubbornness helped me for the first half of my career; I had that real determination to do it my way - I know the best way. That helped me from a 14-year-old to 25 in getting me to where I got to.

Alex Hales has tightened up his game from South Africa and learned about Test cricket. It's great when you see someone who doesn't quite nail it, but goes away and works away at it, come back a person who understands more about Test cricket.

When you're playing, every ball seems like the biggest event. When you're sitting back, you can see the overall picture better.

If I was a second-team player, I probably would have gone to uni.