On this day in 2018: Alastair Cook bows out on a high
Numbers may not exactly do justice to the kind of flair that Alastair Cook brought to Test cricket. Not even the batting style that he brings to the table. But his impact can be felt by looking at the struggles of opening batsmen against the new ball on England soil.
Almost every other player who opened the batting for England in the last decade struggled to get past that tricky passage of play. Cook wasn’t all perfect in these difficult situations but experiences helped him understand the tricks to survive longer at the crease. His illustrious 12-year Test cricket career saw him amass 12,472 runs with the help of 33 Test tons across 161 Tests.
However, his batting average of 45.35 is by far the lowest among players in the 10,000 Test runs club. Over the past 7-8 English seasons, the conditions for the batsmen, especially the openers have been tricky. Which is why Cook’s average dropped from nearly 50 to 45. At the start of the 2013 home season, the southpaw scored 7524 runs in 92 matches with 25 Test hundreds. Predictions were made over the England opener to break every batting record of Sachin Tendulkar only to fall way short of it.
Brilliance in Asia
Cook thrived in harmless conditions for facing the new ball i.e. in Asia, showing his true class against spin bowling. As a visiting player, he smashed nine hundreds across 28 matches on the subcontinent pitches. Those are the most number of Test hundreds in Asia for any non-Asian player. Five of those nine tons came in India itself, the most Test centuries for a visiting player on Indian soil. His three massive tons in the 2012 series ended England’s 28-year drought of a Test series win in India.
A solid finish
Alastair Cook made his Test debut in India on England’s tour of 2006 after Marcus Trescothick pulled out due to personal reasons. Rushing to Nagpur for the first Test, Cook scored 60 runs in his maiden innings after spending more than three hours at the crease. He improved his performance by smashing an unbeaten 104 in the second essay during a 364-minute long stay. The match ended in a draw with India finishing on 260/6 in pursuit of a 368-run target.
Coincidently, in 2018, India turned out to be the opponents in Cook’s last Test that was played at The Oval. The opener made a gritty 71 across the first two sessions of the opening day and followed it with a big hundred in his final innings. Cook scored 147 in England’s second innings after battling out for nearly six and a half hours. England ended up winning the game by 118 runs and sealed the series with a 4-1 margin. Cook retired from international cricket, collecting a Player of the Match award in his final Test appearance.
