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England v India 1st ODI: Alastair Cook and Alex Hales to open against India

Image: Alex Hales has been a successful opener for the England T20 side

England captain Alastair Cook has confirmed that Alex Hales will be his opening partner for the upcoming five-match one-day international series against India.

The series gets underway at Bristol on Monday and Hales, who is already a mainstay of the England T20 side, will make his debut for the ODI team.

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The 25-year-old opener has been in superb form for Nottinghamshire this summer and Cook is looking forward to partnering him at the top of the order.

“Alex Hales will open the batting with me,” said the England captain. “What has been pleasing about Alex, over the last month or so I think he has scored four hundreds for Nottinghamshire, at a good rate as well.

“He is a different batter to the other guys. He hits the ball incredibly hard and he hits it in slightly different areas.

“He has an unorthodox technique which seems to work really well for him.

“He’s done really well in T20 cricket and now he’s got the chance, in these five games, to show what he can do at 50 overs.”

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Cook does not think Hales’ aggressive style will affect his own approach, adding: “I don’t think it changes my role.

He is a different batter to the other guys. He hits the ball incredibly hard and he hits it in slightly different areas. He has an unorthodox technique which seems to work really well for him.
Alastair Cook

“The job of the top four or five is to try and score a hundred, to try and set up the game. You have to do it in your way.”

Cook was under pressure earlier in the summer, particularly when the Test team lost to India at Lord’s to continue a lengthy winless run and fall 1-0 down in the series.

Comeback

However, they won the next three Tests in convincing fashion to take the series 3-1 and Cook admitted that the comeback gave him a lot of satisfaction.

“It was a really nice feeling,” he said. “When you turn it round and you win the Test series, then you have a couple of days when you can get away with it and reflect, and I think we did some really good things over the last three games.

“From where this side was after Lord’s, 1-0 down and we hadn’t won a Test for 10 games, to win three on the bounce and play as well as we did, I think we took a lot from that.

“We haven’t got any Test matches now for seven months so it was a nice way to leave the Test team, to win like we did.

“We stayed in the dressing-room for a long time afterwards and chatted through the summer.

“It was good to win again. When you win, you get praise. When you lose, you get criticism. Over the last year or so, we lost more games than we should have done.”

Watch today's first ODI match between England and India live on SS2 from 10am

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