Alastair Cook believes England&rsquo;s historic back-to-back Test wins in India are deserved reward for their year of hard work and willingness to learn. Yesterday&rsquo;s seven-wicket victory at Eden Gardens put England 2-1 up with just one match to play, and on course for a first series success here in almost 28 years. The sustained wicket-taking spells of spinners Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann and reverse-swing seamers James Anderson and Steven Finn are continued demonstration of the skills England&rsquo;s bowlers have devised and perfected to prosper in Asia. <img alt="" src="http://images.mid-day.com/2012/dec/cookeden.jpg" style="width: 400px; height: 353px;" /> England captain Alastair Cook with his man-of-the match award in Kolkata yesterday.u00a0Pic/Ajay Royu00a0 The first step, according to England&rsquo;s new captain, was to recognise there was an issue - and then start doing something about it. Amid the euphoria of the latest victory, albeit achieved after a last-minute wobble when England lost their first three wickets for eight in pursuit of just 41, Cook acknowledged they have trodden a difficult path in the past 12 months. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had a tough 2012,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But the way we&rsquo;ve managed to quickly rectify a few of our problems is a credit to our coaching staff and the leadership of (coach) Andy Flower - and the players as well. &ldquo;The first thing was a realisation of a problem, playing against spin. It probably wasn&rsquo;t as big as everyone made out. But all of us as a batting unit had to have a look at our technique against spin and work out a method which suits each of us individually. &ldquo;We worked our socks off trying to improve our technique. Although we didn&#39;t get immediate results &ndash; it&rsquo;s not going to happen overnight - we are now starting to.&rdquo; If a transitional period had ensued post-Strauss, there would have been obvious mitigation. But it has not, and Cook added: &ldquo;The way everyone has stuck together under a new captain, I can&rsquo;t praise them enough. I think what we&rsquo;ve done really is we&#39;ve taken what we&rsquo;ve been doing in the nets out into the middle, and started to perform close to our potential. That&rsquo;s why we&#39;ve won these last couple of games.&rdquo; It all clicked first of all for a 10-wicket win in Mumbai, and then in Kolkata - apart from one dodgy session on Saturday and yesterday&rsquo;s minor stumble, England barely put a foot wrong.

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We worked our socks off: cook

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We worked our socks off: cook

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