1. 245 at Sheikh Zayed Stadium, 2014.
Alastair Cook flew home in December 2012 having won in India in his first series as new England captain; perhaps the ultimate achievement for an England team. And then he plummeted swiftly to earth. He left Nagpur with a Test average of around fifty. Over the next two and a half years up to his second series in UAE against Pakistan, he averaged 38.4, going two years without a hundred. His career average had dropped to the mid forties, and runs when they came were mostly in low pressure situations; he struggled in the big Ashes series. His technique came and went suddenly and unpredictably, like sunshine on a hillside.
And his captaincy had lost the support of many. I switched on the Tests when Cook was out, in a futile imitation of military men turning their backs on a disgraced colleague. Tuning in as England's new best bat, Joe Root loped to the middle.
Sport is a young man's game. The athleticism and the miraculous reflexes of great players can seem to border on the heroic in a junior, like the emerging Joe Root. Cook arrived in Dubai 31 years old. Beyond a certain point, sport struggles for meaning. Is it useful for a thirty-plus man to spend his day in the nets, burning up quite so much of his energy and ingenuity to the end of hitting the ball in the middle of the bat, beyond the reach of the fielders?
And yet, that is the point at which careers can acquire a trace of human pathos. That a person who has done this so many times, can generate the heart and spirit to do it again, like Falstaff finding the ardour to carouse through another day. And this poignancy gave Cook's 263 in Abu Dhabi a context that his innings over the years seem to have struggled for. It weighted his time at the crease with a little gravity, which I've never felt in even his most epic endeavours.
Pakistan batted first and scored 523-8
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/902635.html in the first Test of a series they were expected to win with ease. In reply, Cook batted for 14 hours in extreme heat, and saw England to a small lead, which they damn near turned into a most unlikely win. It was an innings in which Cook could have been out many times, but he kept going, hour after hour, session after session. He saw six much younger men come and go and he established England's tenure in the series at the first attempt. Most of his runs were acquired though square leg and midwicket... There were no sixes, and few fours. It was a statement of endurance. In my view, it is the only innings of his England career that will trouble those compiling the greatest innings of all time.
I always say that everybody's right.