Revitalised Ed Cowan sheds batting shackles Strike rate: Ed Cowan is going on the attack with the bat. Photo: Philip Gostelow Being a resolute opener got Ed Cowan into the Test team - but by the end of last season it had sapped almost all the enjoyment he had savoured from playing the game over the past decade. The NSW-born Tasmanian never relished the constant public depictions of him as the dour opener who served as the yang to David Warner's yin, because he felt it sold him short as a batsman. As he digested the 2013-14 season, however, he conceded it was warranted. His record of 662 runs at 38.94 was solid but his strike rate of 42.88 of was the third lowest of the Sheffield Shield's top 30 run-scorers, in front of only Cameron Bancroft and Scott Henry. Simply, batting "had become a bit of a grind - making runs was hard work." I think I'd faced 300 more balls than I had in any other shield season, but I ended up with 300 fewer runs than my best year. That to me says I just wasn't scoring, I was surviving," he said. Cowan is not an inherently defensive player; it is just that he has been ever since he was on the radar of Australian selectors. When the now 32-year-old moved from NSW to Tasmania five and a half years ago it brought a change in approach "came about from batting on a pretty green Bellerive wicket where driving was really out of the question, unless you enjoy doing crosswords." I sort of manufactured a technique to score runs at home that involved cutting and pulling and locking into a front-foot defence. I held my bat up high so I could drop my bat into the line of the ball and play a perfect forward defence, but I couldn't drive the ball, let alone swing at the ball. Cowan's response, devised while he was simultaneously electing whether to stay in Hobart or return to Sydney to better suit his family and also creating his fledgling Tripod Coffee business in what little spare time he had, was to attempt to turn back the clock a decade in terms of his batting philosophy, albeit complemented by "the mental skills of 10 years of first-class cricket." My technique had become a bit of a caricature of what it was reputed to be ... but I've flipped that on its head, I've changed my thinking. Now, rather than 'how is this bowler going to get me out?' it's 'how am I going to attack him?' That's come about through not only through a shift in thinking but having the mechanics to do that," he said. Nothing came of that new technique in his first shield innings of the season - he made a 10-ball duck - but in the second he made an even 100 on the WACA Ground, at a strike-rate of just under 60 - with 17 boundaries. Notching a century in the first match of the season would have generated at least some Test-related news stories in the past two or three years. That it did not was partly a reflection that it was done in another time zone on the other side of the country to most media outlets. It was also because Cowan, who has not played since a double failure while ill in the 2013 Ashes series in England, is well out of current selection contention, by enough margin to warrant description as "former Test player." "It's certainly not insulting; it's factual," he said of that description. I had an opportunity to be the Test opener and I didn't take it at the time. But I don't think that description necessarily writes you off doing that in the future. If anything, it's just a nice reminder of where you want to end up. Cowan's new, more expansive technique will be tested this weekend on a number of fronts. In addition to it being the Tigers' first match at Blundstone Arena, still a generally tough venue for batsmen, it will be a day-night match running from 2pm to 9pm, concluding each day under lights, as part of a Cricket Australia trial to aid its plan for day-night Tests. Rather than be perturbed at the negative effect on batsmen's averages from playing in such conditions, a criticism expressed by Kevin Pietersen, Cowan's primary reservation was his experience at the MCG earlier this year, when fielders struggled to see the experimental pink ball from the outfield. It [day-night Tests] is going to happen. It's just a matter of making it the best product they can," he said. Cowan's 2011 season diary, In The Firing Line, revealed his propensity to pore over his performances, especially his failures, in a bid to improve. This season that will be a near impossibility. During the shield break for the Big Bash League, in which he is uncontracted, he will commentate on the Adelaide and Sydney Tests for ABC Radio. All through the season his responsibilities as a player, husband to Virginia and father to toddler Romy will be complemented by his business, which aims to supply coffee capsules that can be discarded in household recycling bins rather than in general waste. He runs the business with now-former Tasmania batsman Steve Cazzulino, a result of "Steve and I having a few crazy entrepreneurial chats and deciding to action one for a change." That the business only progressed from wholesale to retail sales this week, in the thick of cricket season, would seem to be a distraction for Cowan, who typically devotes his early mornings and evenings to business matters. He insisted it was the opposite. "I've found when my best cricket is played the less important cricket is [in my life] at that point of time ... [and] I wouldn't be the only one," he said. I think in this professional day and age there's such a focus on that whole angle of professionalism - dedicating every single minute of your day, otherwise you're not a professional - it's used with utmost respect. I think there should actually be a bit more amateurism in the way we play. You've got to love the game, you've got to love giving your time to the game irrespective of its rewards.