Ian Cockbain: I'm starting to believe I'm good enough

Gloucestershire batsman is likely to attract significant interest in Monday's The Hundred draft. NICK FRIEND caught up with him after a productive winter in the PSL and Big Bash

"Jeez, playing for Bootle seems a million miles away from playing in the Big Bash or the PSL."

Ian Cockbain laughs as he recounts a winter that completed the unlikely journey from Merseyside's Wadham Road to Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium.

Only 14 men have scored more runs in the history of the T20 Blast and – unless circumstances conspire against him this summer – he will climb ahead of Phil Mustard, Chris Nash and Ryan ten Doeschate and ever-nearer the top 10.

For a 35-year-old who served much of his career beneath the radar of those involved with the franchise circuit, these are truly the days of his cricketing life.

At the end of last summer, this conversation wasn't one he would have been expecting: for Gloucestershire, he had an excellent Blast but endured a frustrating campaign in The Hundred with Welsh Fire, moving around the batting order without much clarity to his role.

Not long into 2022, Gary Kirsten called him to explain that he wouldn't be retained. Little did he know, it was the start of a whirlwind period. Cockbain was in Melbourne at the time, playing club cricket for Langwarrin and struggling for runs on the suburban league's synthetic pitches. He had wrongly assumed it would be a cakewalk: "I thought it was going to be really easy, wasn't going to get off the straight and would have a bit of pace in it."

^{Ian Cockbain is in The Hundred draft on Monday (April 4)}

As he soon realised, each surface had its own characteristics – the older the carpet, the skiddier the bounce. The newer pitches were slower and more tennis-ball-like. In all, he managed 196 runs in seven innings.

Only, everything changed the day after his release with a phone call from Dan Worrall, last year a county teammate at Bristol. The gist was that Adelaide Strikers were riddled with positive Covid cases and missing a raft of batters, and they wanted him to solve their crisis. Cockbain was holidaying in the city with his wife, an Adelaide native. "The next minute I was joining up with the squad."

He responded to their show of desperate faith with 239 runs in six innings, averaging 59.75 in the process. Karachi Kings followed up, under the management of Peter Moores, with an offer of their own.

"With a bit of luck, I'll be playing for a team with a clear role, and I'll get a decent opportunity"

Tom Abell had been ruled out, and a replacement was required. Moores was after experience, and suddenly Cockbain – having never previously been afforded a franchise opportunity – was the go-to man. There, he only played three games and Karachi were woeful, losing nine of their 10 matches.

But that relative disappointment won't get in the way of an overriding sense of pride and achievement. "It confirmed what I've been thinking over the last couple of years: am I good enough, am I not good enough? Getting that chance and doing well, maybe I am good enough.

"It's been frustrating to not have that opportunity in the past, when my cricket has been just as good as it is now for the last couple of years. To finally have a foot in the door is very nice."

^{Cockbain has enjoyed an excellent franchise winter}

When Cockbain last spoke to The Cricketer in 2020, he was in a different place: overlooked in the draft for The Hundred, he was bemoaning how becoming an anchor in Gloucestershire's successful T20 side – "doing the dirty jobs", as he called it then – had hindered his chances and might prevent him from reaching the next level. In the three campaigns ahead of the inaugural draft, his strike rate was fairly pedestrian but his overall output still extremely respectable.

So, he came out swinging. That summer, when Gloucestershire faced Birmingham Bears on a rain-reduced night at Edgbaston, he bludgeoned an unbeaten 84 in just 35 balls in front of the Sky cameras. He was the competition's fourth-highest run-scorer at a rapid rate – 169.78 – that dwarfed his career figure, and in 2020's shortened Blast, he hit more sixes than in the previous two seasons combined. All told, over the Blast's last two editions, no one batting below No.3 has scored more runs as quickly.

"I was very clear about how I wanted to approach my cricket going forward," he explains, "and I've just adapted to take that mantle on, I guess. It's worked really well – it could have gone one of two ways: I could have gone out there, tried to blaze it, kept hitting it up the chimney and getting caught. So, it could have gone the other way, but luckily it's gone well. Having that clearer focus of what I wanted to do has probably given me a bit more of a plan.

"It's one thing getting there, it's another thing staying in that merry-go-round. If I can get a few runs in the Blast and do well in The Hundred, hopefully that will cement my spot for the winter coming"

"It wasn't too much of a shift because I always felt that I could play that role as well. It wasn't like I was a one-paced hitter, so moving up through the gears was always in my locker. I just had never needed to do it. Whereas now, moving forward in my career playing a bit of franchise cricket, I had to."

This is the plan now – to make up for lost time. Cockbain only made his professional debut as a 24-year-old, and he considers himself the antithesis of many players at his age, having only ever suffered a single muscle injury. He is keen to remain part of Gloucestershire's red-ball plans for as long as possible as they belatedly enter the LV= Insurance County Championship's top tier after a two-year wait, but he is happy to admit that this summer's limited-over segment represents a significant shop window ahead of the winter.

"It's a definite focus of mine," he says. "I've had a bit of a taste of it now in the Big Bash, with someone who wanted me to play my best role of batting at the top. Doing well in that will hopefully open up a few more doors. I'm still looking to make my mark in the PSL, but I'm hoping with The Hundred coming up that it does open up a few doors for next winter. If I can get on the franchise circuit over the next couple of years, it'd be fantastic.

^{Cockbain played for Welsh Fire in 2021}

"I'm not going to stop striving for it. It's one thing getting there, it's another thing staying in that merry-go-round. If I can get a few runs in the Blast and do well in The Hundred, hopefully that will cement my spot for the winter coming."

There was some surprise when he was let go by Welsh Fire, which only swelled once he had taken the Big Bash by storm. He is expected to fetch a decent fee when the results of the partial draft are announced on Tuesday. "With a bit of luck," he says, "I'll be playing for a team with a clear role, and I'll get a decent opportunity."

Among the other domestic batters available with a comparable skillset, Laurie Evans is likely to attract strong interest, having enjoyed a similarly belated rise on the franchise circuit. Like Cockbain, Evans thrived over the winter in the Big Bash with Perth Scorchers.

He laughs once again as he reflects on how far removed this talk is from where it all began, playing at Bootle and more recently for Formby. Before Gloucestershire took a punt more than a decade ago, he had spent three years as an MCC Young Cricketer.

"It's something I'm very proud of," he says, "coming through the club system and going around the houses a little bit to get to where I am now. It is nice to look back on the grounding that I had."

As for Worrall, Cockbain knows the situation. "I definitely owe him a beer or two, that's for sure."