Sledging and scoring, the Ed Cowan way

You have to respect a cricketer who tried to start up a new age of sledging on Twitter by dispatching the following message to Sulieman Benn: "hey @sulibenn - hope you tweet better than you bowl". The sender was Ed Cowan, the one-time investment analyst and now Tasmania opening batsman, and one of Australian cricket's most entertaining tweeters.

He didn't get a response, perhaps because he'd left a letter out of the West Indian's account name. The mistake probably wasn't deliberate, but if it was you couldn't blame him - even a 20-hour aeroplane trip away, Benn would be a scary adversary. Either way, it was a fun idea.

Cowan's followers had better hope he never makes the Australian side, or his tweets and guest spots on the Cricket with Balls blog might come under Cricket Australia's censorial eye. But a national call-up is not out of the question, after Cowan finished behind only David Hussey on last year's Sheffield Shield run tally.

It was his first season with Tasmania after switching from New South Wales, where he was competing with a line-up of openers including Phillip Hughes and Phil Jaques. Cowan, 28, followed up with a century for Australia A, but he knows that his Test ambitions will only be fulfilled if he produces more than one outstanding season.

"If you're not in the Aussie team, you're out of the Aussie team," Cowan told ESPNcricinfo. "There's no 'close to' the Aussie team. Particularly in Test cricket, you've got to show that you can do it season after season, like the last five or six seasons, Jaques and [Chris] Rogers and [Simon] Katich when he was out of the team, just piling on the runs.

"Knowing my role continually and being able to prepare accordingly was really massive [last year]. I always felt as though I was under pressure at New South Wales, if I failed in one game I was going to be dropped. Knowing the [Tasmanian] coaching staff and the captain had the confidence to back me, I felt that in my own batting and felt I could play how I wanted to play."

His freedom resulted in a season of 957 Sheffield Shield runs at 53.16, including a career-best 225 against South Australia. It was a fine outcome for a man who had managed only 21 first-class appearances for New South Wales in five seasons. Cowan has kept in touch for this summer by playing club cricket in the Netherlands, where he was introduced to a peculiarity of Dutch cricket.

"It's a quirky little cricket community in the Netherlands," he said. "It's very old school. All the grounds are surrounded by canals. [When the ball goes in], they have swimming pool scoops that you fetch the ball, throw it back and dry it off and away you go, you keep playing with it."

That might help him during his early-season matches in drizzly Tasmania, where he will be joined in the top order by the South Australian discard Mark Cosgrove. The Redbacks' decision to axe Cosgrove, who has played ODI cricket for Australia, was one of the surprises of the off-season and Cowan hopes his new team-mate can also thrive on a change of scenery.

"He still has his best seasons ahead and for whatever reason the SACA didn't want to contract him but their loss is certainly our gain," Cowan said. "We're excited because he fits in so well to our group. We see him as such an attacking one-day option, to fit in with our other strokemakers. And in four-day cricket that hole left by Dan Marsh is pretty important for us [to fill]."

Judging by Cosgrove's form in the opening Ryobi Cup match, he will be another valuable import for Tasmania. But Cowan had better hope the Tigers don't also go chasing Sulieman Benn for the Twenty20 competition, or he could be on the wrong end of a big bash.