ENGLAND captain Alastair Cook will make his first appearance of the summer for the Essex Eagles in their NatWest T20 Blast match with Surrey at the Kia Oval tomorrow night.

Cook became the country’s highest Test Match run scorer earlier this week when he moved past Graham Gooch’s tally of 8,900 by scoring 75 against New Zealand.

But he will now be focusing on the shorter format of the game, much to the delight of Essex’s head coach Paul Grayson whose side are currently bottom of their group in the competition.

“Alistair’s a class player as everyone knows and his presence will be a boost for us,” said Grayson.

“We’ve had a difficult few weeks but I’m sure we’ll turn things around, hopefully starting with a win tomorrow.”

Essex will certainly need to come out on top too after winning just one of their first five games in the T20 blast.

But Grayson remains convinced his side have what it takes to turn things around and reach the latter stages of the competition.

“We know that we have a group who are capable of going on a six or seven match unbeaten run and I’ve great confidence in the lads that they can do that,” said the coach.

“We haven’t made a good start to our campaign but we are determined to get things right. “At this stage, we just want to get a win from somewhere but one of the key things is to make sure we do the basics better than the opposition.

“The teams that do that are the most consistent and with consistency you get performances and results.

“However, I appreciate games are running out a little bit and we need to start winning.”

Cook will not have to face former England teammate Kevin Pietersen after he left Surrey to take part in the Caribbean Premier League.

Pietersen was critical of Cook’s captaincy in his autobiography, released last year.

Essex (from): ten Doeschate, Ryder , Cook , Westley , Bopara , Velani , Foster , Smith , Napier, Masters, Topley, Tait , Nijjar & Porter