Ashes 2013-14: England’s Alastair Cook eyes fourth series win

Alastair Cook says England would be wrong not to think about a fourth straight Ashes series win.

Cook’s men have the opportunity to retain the famous urn Down Under this winter after England secured a 3-0 win against Australia in the home series this summer.

The 28-year-old batsman, who is aiming to win the Ashes for a third time, wants his squad to make amends for a poor Champions Trophy and taste victory in the coming months.

“I think it would be wrong not to think about it,” Cook told the ECB’s website.

“I think I said at the beginning of the summer when we had the opportunity to win an Ashes series and the Champions Trophy – the 50-over side hadn’t won a global tournament – to win an Ashes in two months, yes, there’s a lot of hard work but there’s an opportunity and you
have to look at opportunities.

“We didn’t quite take that Champions Trophy one. The more it goes on, the more it hurts because we had a golden opportunity to do that, but we won the Ashes.

“And I kept saying it was an opportunity at the beginning of that summer and it’s no different now.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen in the next three months, but what is in front of us is the opportunity to play well and to do something special and to win four in a row, which hasn’t been done for a very long time, and as a side you want to be involved in that sort of thing.”

The first Test begins in Brisbane on 21 November.