Alastair Cook has claimed that the influx of young attacking players has changed his approach to the England captaincy.
The England skipper has faced criticism in the past for his conservative style on the field, but ahead of the first Ashes Test in Cardiff, Cook believes that the current group of players looking to him for guidance make it easier to attack.
"There's been a lot written about my captaincy. I think at certain times I have to be able to get on that front foot as captain. With this set of players it's different," he told reporters.
If you look a little bit further back with a different set of players when I first started, it was a methodical team, people who liked really banging out areas time and time again, batters who relentlessly ground down the opposition and that's what we got a lot of success from.
"The guys coming in now are little bit more free-spirited and we might go at a slightly higher economy rate, but the chance of bowling jaffers are higher and that's the same with our batting. So it's about letting them do that and make them feel comfortable doing that."
Sports Mole has picked out five key battles ahead of the start of the series on Wednesday.
Callum Mulvihill
