Alastair Cook

“You don't get to the top in professional sport without being hard and tough, but I do that in my way. I don't shout or scream, but I am determined and I will push harder than 99 per cent of cricketers in training.”

“In one sense, what happens for me outside of cricket gives me that break - the farming means I have a really different life outside of cricket; it's not just cricket, cricket, cricket for 12 months of the year.”

“The one thing about professional sport is it's all about results, and at the end of the day, if someone is employing you and you're not scoring runs or you're not taking wickets, they ain't going to carry on doing it, and there's no any other way of saying that; that's unfortunately the ruthless business of professional sport.”

“The musical training taught me to focus my mind, before playing in an orchestra taught me how to truly concentrate. If you miss your moment in an orchestra, there is no forgiving.”

“If you play 100-odd Test matches, there's going to be little periods when you don't score runs, and I've always managed to turn it around.”

“Throughout my career I have done it my way and used my stubborn streak. I thought the best way to captain was to shut out all the noise - I did it with my batting and thought 'that has served me well, so why change it?'”

“All I ever wanted to do was play cricket for England and be successful.”

“I've got that ruthlessness inside me. All good captains have to be able to say things like that - with good man-management skills.”

“The captaincy thing is brilliant, and I love it. But I didn't start off playing cricket to captain England. I wanted to score runs and stuff.”

“It does take a lot of effort to perform, playing for England. It's a huge amount of sacrifice to do and one day I might just wake up and say 'you know what, I'm done with it.'”

“Everyone has technical flaws - no matter how many runs you score.”

“You need to come to terms with the fact that you are not an international cricketer anymore and that's certainly difficult to come to terms with. But then I love going to my farm and spending time with my family. Drop and pick up my kids from school and play cricket as well.”

“The family farm plays such a big part in my life and I genuinely love going back there. In some ways I'd like to spend every day there, but there would be a big hole in my life if I didn't stay involved in cricket.”

“I love cricket but I like being away from it as well.”

“From a purely selfish, batting point of view, I couldn't bat any better than the 2010-11 Ashes and then in India in 2012. That was as good as I could play.”

“I have achieved more than I could have ever imagined and feel very privileged to have played for such a long time alongside some of the greats of the English game.”

“When I was made captain, one of my things was that whatever happens in those four years, you don't want to make major changes just before a World Cup. We'd done it before, and it never worked.”

“No disrespect to county cricket but when you're playing for England it is the ultimate, it is what has always driven me to push myself above and beyond.”

“If I was a second-team player, I probably would have gone to uni.”

“As cricketers we fail all the time. You score a hundred every now and again but you get out between nought and 20 far more often. If you get 50, you feel bad because you should have got a hundred. Even if you get a hundred, you feel you should have got 150. So you're always failing.”