Former England captain Alastair Cook and late Shane Warne didn't share the best relationship. The veterans faced each other during the 2006/7 Ashes, when Cook was fairly new to cricket while Warne was at the fag end of his career. The limited on-field battle didn't prevent a feud from developing between the two cricket icons.

During Cook's captaincy tenure, Shane Warne was very critical of Cook and didn't shy away from taking cunning jibes via newspaper columns. Cook saw Warne's jibes as personal attacks and said 'something needs to be done about it'.

"Something needs to be done," Cook had said, "because in three years I've been England captain, I have just, in my eyes, been criticised for a hell of a lot of that."

The two, however, sorted out the differences over an amicable phone call in July 2014. When Cook stepped down as captain in 2017, Warne was one of the first ones to praise him.

"He's been a wonderful ambassador for the game of cricket. He's one of those guys you wouldn't mind your daughter marrying, he's a wonderful guy."

"He's respected and I think he's gone about it with a lot of class. He went through some really tough times a few years ago when a lot of us, me included, thought he wasn't suited to the job," he added.

Speaking about Shane Warne, Alastair Cook said that he was great to talk about cricket when they moved on from the tough phase of their relationship.

"One of the things I suppose is sad is that I never experienced Shane Warne from the media side. [I never got] to go and have a beer with him and really chat to him about sport and about his views on cricket," Cook told Mirror.co.uk

"When I chatted to him in the past, after that stage where we kind of went through a bit of a tough side in 2015, he was brilliant to talk to about cricket. He had a great cricket brain, thought about things that I’d never thought about.

"He was very keen to offer help. Adil Rashid came in for a session with him in Abu Dhabi. He was renowned for and brilliant for that. The game is poorer off without him.”

Cook also revealed his reaction when he heard the tragic news of Shane Warne's death. Warne passed away at the age of 52 due to a heart attack in 2022.

"We were on the plane for an Abu Dhabi pre-season tour with Essex. You know, word gets round and there was just shock.”