Cook hits the ground running to give England an early boost

side, and physical poise is the spouse of mental equilibrium.

Cook cover drives – or least he gets bat on ball when cover driving – only when everything is synchronised, and he reeled off several prime examples against Lewis Gregory and Jamie Overton, belying his reputation as a handsome fellow who scores ugly runs. As for the spinners, including Jack Leach with his revised and jogged between overs with the helmet to save the wicketkeeper trouble. Dutiful. Cook has ever been dutiful. Cook caught one slip catch, offered by Marcus Trescothick, and initially palmed but recovered to catch a second. The first would have done credit to a spring lamb as he had to dive full stretch and low to his right. All told, Cook gave the impression it would be a while yet before he focuses fulltime on his own lambs.

Part of the “stagnation”, as Cook himself called it, in the England team last year was attributable to their poor fielding – not the groundfielding but the slip-catching. Cook dropped a couple of straightforward slip catches in India, the first damaging England’s chances of winning the Rajkot Test, the second their chances of drawing in Chennai – and he was offered only five chances in all. So England should benefit in this way too from Cook no longer being distracted by captaincy.

Two other left-handed openers of international status batted, but neither so fluent as Cook. Trescothick, after a presentation for his 25 years of Somerset service, played several handsome drives but was also more impulsive than usual – it is being said the prospect of making one more first-class century, to surpass Harold Gimblett’s record of 49 for the county, is weighing upon him. Dean Elgar, who will open for South Africa in July, is much more organised than in his three games for Somerset in 2012.

The kindest thing to be said about Somerset’s total of 209 is that it reflected the fact this is their first championship game of the season. It was a nippy day, the clouds on the Quantocks refusing to budge, and around the country wickets tumbled in much cooler weather than the opening weekend. But most of the Somerset dismissals were selfinflicted.

Neither of Essex’s spinners – who took five wickets for 68 runs from 35 overs – was a young Englishman. Stephen Harmer took 20 Test wickets for South Africa with his offbreaks. He claimed two more here.

Back in 1999 Ashar Zaidi made his first-class debut as an opening batsman for Islamabad and fifthchange bowler, but a left-arm spinner ranked 50th in Pakistan is going to be one of the best in England. The 35-year-old finished with three for 17.