Simon Cook

Standing at 6ft 4ins, Simon Cook is a lively fast-medium bowler. He jumped from taking the new ball for Cumnor - a league side in Oxfordshire - in 1996 to taking the new ball with Angus Fraser for Middlesex against Ireland in the Benson & Hedges Cup a year later. The considerable promotion was accidental: he admits Middlesex scouts "weren't watching me, they were looking at Andy Strauss, who they also signed". The pair were playing together in a representative U-19s match against Warwickshire

At Middlesex, shin splints and a stress fracture delayed Cook's progress from an effective one-day bowler to Championship bowler. In 2000 injury and form restricted him to only seven first-class appearances. When Fraser, his mentor, left the club two years later for a career in journalism, he filled the containing role and recorded his best, 8 for 63, at Northampton on a good batting track and finished just short of 50 first-class wickets. In 2004 he equalled Adam Hollioake's National League record of 39 wickets in a season, and was also Middlesex's leading first-class wicket-taker. However, in Cook's eight years there, they won no titles, and at the end of 2004, he signed a two-year contract with Kent.
Debashish Biswas (September 2006)