Getting a call while having dinner is not something everyone appreciates. But on Tuesday night Ed Cowan probably lost his appetite when he saw the name of the caller id — that of Australia’s chairman of selectors John Inverarity.
“I better answer this one,” the Tasmanian opening batsman told his god parents with whom he was having dinner.
Dream comes true
“It’s cliched, but you dream of it as a kid to play in a Boxing Day Test. After a brief moment of reflection, you want to be contributing to the team, so I think it’s down to the grindstone for a little bit of hard work and then hopefully after the series is done you can sit back and reflect on hopefully what is a positive outcome,” Cowan said on Wednesday.
“I don’t think there will be too much time to reflect now. I think the next couple of days will move pretty quickly and then we're into it, so we’ll see.”
Driving force
{{/usCountry}}Driving force
{{/usCountry}}He added that the death of celebrated cricket writer Peter Roebuck, who coached him at Sydney’s Cranbrook School, while he was playing a Sheffield Shield match, was the trigger for him to take it up a notch.
“That week I was really heavily focused on performing well, not that you are any other way, but it was an added incentive as a ‘thank you’ I guess, for his kindness towards me over all the years. That did kick things off, the day he passed away was the day I got 91 not out in Burnie and really kick-started my season,” he said.
A century in the drawn warm-up game, for the Cricket Australia Chairman’s XI against the Indians, appears to have sealed the deal in the end.