New faces add pep to England challenge

Abu Dhabi: Equipped with six new faces and a new format, England skipper Alastair Cook is bracing for a new start against Pakistan in the four-match one-day series, starting here today.

Addressing a press conference here yesterday, Cook said, "Yes, the Tests didn't go to plan and we didn't play very well. It's a new format, the squad's introduced six new faces, it's brought a freshness and enthusiasm to the squad and hopefully we can start well tomorrow."

"I think every series is a Test. You can't always say it's going to be perfect all the way and there's going to be some real tough moments and you need characters to pull through in these times. It's been a tough five weeks as a Test tour but this is now a different side and a fresh side and hopefully we can bring that enthusiasm into the game tomorrow," he said.

Commenting on rivals Pakistan, who are ranked fifth (England are on number six), Cook said: "They're a confident team and winning breeds confidence. We're not worried about what they are, we'll just try and do well in that first hour and Pakistan will do the same."

Cook opened with Kevin Pietersen against the England Lions in the warm-up game on Friday and the ODI captain said: "It went well. I think we got 80-odd together and it felt comfortable straight away. It's a new challenge for KP — he did it a little bit in India, for a couple of games at the World Cup before he got injured and he showed signs of promise.

In full flow

"He's excited about it, I'm excited about it and when he's in full flow in the power-play, it's going to be hard to stop him."

England will be looking for some relief against the spinners in the shorter version and Cook hinted at a more positive approach. "Certainly the one-day game dictates you have to be more positive and we're not going to have men around the bat all the time so it changes your mentality as a batter, it frees you up and we've got a good record against Pakistan, we've had success against these bowlers before in one-day cricket so, hopefully, we won't banish memories of what happened in the Test matches, but you get to free up a little bit and attack and hopefully that'll help us."

England are playing this ODI series after their 5-0 loss to India and Cook hopes they would have drawn their lessons from that tour.