During Bangladesh’s tour of India four years ago, fielding coach Ryan Cook posed for a picture at the exact place in Kolkata’s Eden Gardens where his father, Jimmy Cook, and Andrew Hudson were photographed as they went out to face the first ball for South Africa in the first ODI against India, back in 1991.
It was South Africa’s first-ever ODI and its first official international game after being banned from cricket because of apartheid in 1970. On his latest tour, Cook is hoping to make some history on his own, as the coach of the Netherlands, the only Associate nation to make it to the World Cup.
That the Dutchmen have qualified is an achievement in itself, after finishing ahead of three Test-playing nations – Zimbabwe, West Indies and Ireland.
“We are all excited that we are playing the World Cup here in India,” Cook told The Hindu here on Sunday. “It’s a great opportunity for the guys to be able to play on this stage. They’ve earned and deserved their right to be here.”
Cook, who worked as the fielding coach of Sunrirsers Hyderabad at this year’s IPL, hopes the Netherlands’ qualification for the World Cup, after a gap of 12 years, would be a boost to the game in the country.
“Hopefully, it would bring a bit more resources into the game,” he said. “I also hope it could generate more interest, and aspiration from the younger players. But cricket has to compete with other sports, like football and hockey. Some work still needs to be done at the grassroots level.”
Looking back at the World Cup Qualifier tournament in Zimbabwe, Cook, whose elder brother Stephen Cook scored a Test hundred on debut, said he was glad that the Netherlands performed as a team, though there were several outstanding individual performances, from the likes of Logan van Beek, Scott Edwards, Bas de Leede and Teja Nidamanuru.
“We really focus hard on our cohesion, our teamwork,” he said. “Now we want to make it to the semifinals. When you come to a tournament, you owe to the other teams in that tournament and you owe to yourself to try and get to the next round. It is the semi-finals in the case of the World Cup.”
He believes it is going to be an open World Cup. “In that South African series, Australia won two games pretty convincingly, and then South Africa won three in a row,” he pointed out. “New Zealand beat England, England beat New Zealand. In the Asia Cup, everyone was beating each other.”
