Cowan keeps his eye on the clock, not the scoreboard MOHALI: In his submission to Mickey Arthur last week Ed Cowan told the head coach that his focus was on the minutes column of the score-sheet, not the runs. The opener was one of 12 Australian players to return their feedback to Arthur on time - the other four, of course, were stood down for missing the deadline - in a development that shook the touring squad and the Australian game in general to its foundations. Cowan took the assignment set by Arthur seriously and acted immediately on those intentions on Friday. He missed a second Test century by 14 runs but it was his 238 minutes of graft that he was more content with. Australia squandered an opening stand of 139 between Cowan and David Warner to be 7/273 at stumps but there could be no knocking the determination of the Sydney born left-hander simply to stay afloat at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium. "What I said to Mickey was I want to be accountable to bat a long period of time and I put a figure on that which is between me and Mickey," he said. My personal accountability is to bat a long time, I didn't bat for as long as I would have liked but I felt I did fairly well today. At no stage did I think 'I'm getting close to a hundred'. I wasn't even looking at the scoreboard, I was looking at the clock on the other side of the ground saying 'c'mon mate, just get to drinks or change of bowler, get through the next break'. It didn't bother me that I didn't score a hundred, I was happy that I faced 238 balls. Deep down, I would have loved it to be 350 balls and if I faced that many balls I would have been a hundred. But that wasn't the focus for me. It was the third time in 16 Tests together that Cowan and Warner had passed 100 in unison, and their ninth occasion exceeding 50. They are very different players but are growing together as a pair, and Cowan's stubbornness while others fell around him has been key already in the third Test. That said there are no shortage of folks outside the team set-up, from former players to the man on the street, that do not believe the 30-year-old warrants a place in the Test XI. An average in the low-30s is simply not good enough, they say, nor is the way he bats. Cowan, though, said he tries to ignore the continued publication of ex-players' preferred Australian teams, by the likes of Ian Chappell and Shane Warne, that do not include his name. Former Test captain Chappell, now a prominent columnist, consistently calls for Shane Watson to partner Warner at the expense of Cowan. The player himself is resigned to never getting a start in his newspaper or online team no matter how many runs - or minutes - he accumulates. The only thing that matters to him is that he is in the real one. One of the things with Test cricket is you work out pretty quickly that everyone has got an opinion, everyone is entitled to an opinion. Often it's not the same opinion as what you have," Cowan said. I've taken a bit of a head-in-the-sand approach in relation to guys when they pick a team and you're not in it. So be it. I've got the opportunity now and it's important for the team now that I keep playing more innings like today. I'm the first to put my hand up and say I haven't been good enough in terms of making sure those 50, 60-ball innings become 180, 200-ball innings. That's one area where I can really kick on and if I can turn a few more of those starts into long innings then I don't really mind what Ian Chappell has to say. But I doubt that I'll ever see myself in his team.