On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs.

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On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Mon Jun 06, 2016 6:56 pm

With a flick off the pads to the midwicket boundary off the bowling of Nuwan Pradeep against Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street, Alastair Cook joined an elite few (12) players to make 10000 runs in Test cricket.

No England batter has scored more, and the record will remain a huge monument to his durability, and dedication to the cause of the England Test team. Cook is already the leading scorer of centuries for the national side. It's not obvious that his total runs will ever be exceeded by another England player, and if they are, they will be compiled in the shadow of Cook's achievements.

Here is a retrospective of ten of Cook's most memorable innings.


10. 116 v Australia at the WACA, 2006.

After the landmark 2005 Ashes victory, England's defence in 2006-7 was a hopeless, inadequately prepared misadventure. We should have been prepared for the worst when the Prime Minister's XI humiliated the tourists with a 166 run pasting, the usual omen of a disastrous campaign. And the worst came at the Adelaide Oval, when England were overturned after making 551/6 in the first innings. Heavy defeat by England at the WACA is a tradition; until today, they have lost the last seven Tests there, the only win ever coming against the Packer depleted side of 1978-9. In 2006, England batters had managed one ton in Perth in the previous twenty years (123 by Graham Thorpe in the loss in 1995).

And of course England lost this match, http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/249224.html mainly in the field, after Australia made 527-5 in their second innings fast enough to give their superb attack sufficient time to close down the game. The tour became a debacle, but here England resisted for nine hours. Cook batted for six hours of those on a ground ideally suited to his back foot game, managing to keep his hook and pulls down and scoring half his runs through square leg and midwicket.

While Cook batted in his idiosyncratic style, in some ways this wasn't a conventional success, by a batter who rarely seems to surprise. It was one of just two hundreds he has made in the fourth innings of a game (the other was in Bangladesh). And it provides the only real middle ground to the feast and famine of Cook's Ashes résumé, being his sole ton not scored on his staggering tour of Australia in 2010-11. But it is part of a curiously excellent record in defeats. Cook has made five hundreds in losses. Of his contemporaries, Ian Bell didn't make any, and Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen only made one apiece. I take that as a positive, that Cook scored runs when his team mates were struggling. It was his fourth Test ton, on his second tour. Maybe with this knock he learned enough about batting in Australia to score 766 on his next tour. But, for this time, after this Perth defeat, the Ashes were gone once more.
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Sat Jun 11, 2016 7:11 pm

9. 104* at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground, 2006.

Eleven years ago, one of the most treasurable incidental details of the glorious Ashes summer of 2005 was when the tourists were savaged for 502-4 in a day against Essex. This was a few days before the deciding Test at the Oval, and some young dasher called Alastair Cook scored 214 off 238 balls, and with Ravi Bopara had slaughtered the Aussies, in bad need of some good news before the deciding Test at the Oval. Only twenty years old, a tall, good looking left hander, Cook came out of a private school where he was a chorister who played the clarinet.

That winter he was touring with England A in the Caribbean when an injury to Marcus Trescothick meant Cook was called across the world, to play his first Test in Nagpur. Young Cook landed at the airport, put on his pads, and walked into the middle, took guard and scored his first Test century on debut.

And so he did... Yet the picture here is misleading. Cook walked out to 'COOK, MARRY ME' signs among the Indian crowd. But the Aussies were to put a different slant on this glamorous, most eligible portrait when they said Cook is a batter who looks his best with his helmet off. He didn't introduce himself with the entitled insouciance of David Gower or even Kevin Pietersen. He got stuck in at the crease. He played the turn off the pitch, and read the length well. He profited from deflected shots off his legs. He was absolutely determined and he didn't give his wicket up. He walked off unbeaten and with England setting the Indians a target. The slightly eccentric, peripatetic image of the entitled English amateur couldn't have been further from the reality. He was a competitor and a pragmatist. And his legend on Asian pitches was established at the first attempt.
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Sun Jun 12, 2016 5:34 pm

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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Sun Jun 12, 2016 5:45 pm

3. 94 at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, 2012.

There were two hefty bookends to the messy demise of Andy Flower's England side, and the real poison each time was the batting, both here in the UAE , and later in Australia in 2013-14. First, destroyed by spin and then by pace. 3-0 then 5-0. Yet Cook was still at his peak as a batter in the loss to Pakistan, 27 years old and equidistant between his twin triumphs in Australia and India. England and Pakistan weren't entirely playing by the same rules here. On turning pitches with no bounce, the Pakistan spinners were literally throwing the ball into the pitch. With DRS ruling out the ancient right of the benefit of the doubt, run making seemed very nearly impossible.

No England player made more than a single fifty in the series. The difficulty factor was extraordinarily high. It seems a remarkable feat in retrospect that Cook very nearly made a hundred, in the second Test in Abu Dhabi http://www.espncricinfo.com/pakistan-v- ... 31629.html (and went on to score two hundreds in the ODIs). Ultimately he was lbw to Saeed Ajmal's doosra, as so many were. He survived for five hours, and the 139 he added with Jonathan Trott in 50 overs was the nearest England got to meaningful resistance with the bat. Again Cook scored almost exclusively into the on side. He cut a few and drove nothing.

Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar ensured England chased 145 to win. They didn't even get half way. But the determination to overcome the challenge that they failed so badly in UAE led to England winning the following winter in India, and Cook was more prominent than anyone else in that most unexpected triumph.
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:01 pm

7. 118 at the Galle International Stadium, 2007.

This hundred to gain a draw in the final Test, and a 1-0 series defeat, feels hardly remembered now, http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/291224.html perhaps because there is a little futility in batting out a draw in a game that had to be won to level the series. And the tour now seems to be most commonly recalled for Matt Prior's hapless wicket keeping. It was a troubled time for England, in the dark days between the Ashes triumphs of 2005 and 2009. England had lost the Ashes 5-0 in 2006-7, and, less expectedly, the following summer's home series against India. After this defeat in Sri Lanka, Michael Vaughan's captaincy was to gutter and smoke in the ensuing summer against South Africa leading to Kevin Pietersen's clash with Peter Moores.

So it was a tough time, and in 2007 England's old bête noire Muttiah Muralitharan was still operating at his late career peak. When Alastair Cook walked out into the middle with Michael Vaughan for the second innings at Galle, no England player had scored a hundred in the series (though Cook had batted for a long time in the heat of Colombo). In their first innings, England had been bowled out for 81 by Chaminda Vaas in reply to Sri Lanka's 499... It was a hopeless situation. Cook batted for six and a half hours, seeing off 38 overs of Murali, though the draw arrived with some help from heavy rain.

Coming to the end of Cook's second year in Test cricket, he had ensured the loss of Marcus Trescothick hadn't been as deeply felt as might have been the case; though Tres' dominant style wasn't replicated. In a team with Paul Collingwood, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss and Andrew Flintoff, he didn't seem to be a prominent leader, or a likely future captain. The figures were good, having scored nearly 2000 runs at forty five, against some fine bowlers, of both pace and spin. He had now scored two hundreds in Asia too. His innings lacked the personality of those by his contemporaries. And he himself lacked the personality of his team mates in the final throes of Fletcher's team. Cook was to feel more representative of the regimes of Peter Moores, and ultimately, Andy Flower.
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:03 pm

Apologies the previous entry was numbered 3 (I forgot I was counting down from 10!). The 94 in UAE was number 8...
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby braveneutral » Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:04 pm

Is that also the 8th best?
Asia Cup 2012 guru
SA vs Oz 2011 combined guru
SA vs Bangladesh Tests guru
NZ vs WI Tests guru
2014 French Open guru
T20 Blast 2014 guru
India vs WI ODIs 2014 guru
2016 French Open guru
2016 Wimbledon guru
2016 RL50 Cup guru
Premier League Final Placings Prediction League 2016/7 guru
England v SA ODIs 2017 guru
Guru.

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17/04/17 - 'The day that history was made'

20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
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I suppose.

At times.

Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:13 pm

Um, I'm counting down to number one (it's more exciting that way...), so I'm starting at tenth best. I didn't mean to throw in an out of synch number three. That should have been 8. I'm intending to work to a bit of a conclusion, but that hasn't interfered with the sanctity of the list format....
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby braveneutral » Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:34 pm

Excellent!
Asia Cup 2012 guru
SA vs Oz 2011 combined guru
SA vs Bangladesh Tests guru
NZ vs WI Tests guru
2014 French Open guru
T20 Blast 2014 guru
India vs WI ODIs 2014 guru
2016 French Open guru
2016 Wimbledon guru
2016 RL50 Cup guru
Premier League Final Placings Prediction League 2016/7 guru
England v SA ODIs 2017 guru
Guru.

D/L wrote:Words fail me for once.


17/04/17 - 'The day that history was made'

20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
User avatar
braveneutral
 
Posts: 20726
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:22 pm
Location: In between the hemispheres
Team(s) Supported: Northants amongst others.

I suppose.

At times.

Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed Jun 22, 2016 8:43 pm

You're welcome. Have a look around the gift shop...!
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby braveneutral » Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:45 pm

Cook's Cookies?
Asia Cup 2012 guru
SA vs Oz 2011 combined guru
SA vs Bangladesh Tests guru
NZ vs WI Tests guru
2014 French Open guru
T20 Blast 2014 guru
India vs WI ODIs 2014 guru
2016 French Open guru
2016 Wimbledon guru
2016 RL50 Cup guru
Premier League Final Placings Prediction League 2016/7 guru
England v SA ODIs 2017 guru
Guru.

D/L wrote:Words fail me for once.


17/04/17 - 'The day that history was made'

20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
User avatar
braveneutral
 
Posts: 20726
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:22 pm
Location: In between the hemispheres
Team(s) Supported: Northants amongst others.

I suppose.

At times.

Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby braveneutral » Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:47 pm

Can I say I really appreciate the lack of buzzfeed nature of this particular article.

Number 8 not a century.

Fantastic.

In modern culture we are so apt to celebrate the ten best centuries. But alas, breaking the norm. Plaudits sir.
Asia Cup 2012 guru
SA vs Oz 2011 combined guru
SA vs Bangladesh Tests guru
NZ vs WI Tests guru
2014 French Open guru
T20 Blast 2014 guru
India vs WI ODIs 2014 guru
2016 French Open guru
2016 Wimbledon guru
2016 RL50 Cup guru
Premier League Final Placings Prediction League 2016/7 guru
England v SA ODIs 2017 guru
Guru.

D/L wrote:Words fail me for once.


17/04/17 - 'The day that history was made'

20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
User avatar
braveneutral
 
Posts: 20726
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:22 pm
Location: In between the hemispheres
Team(s) Supported: Northants amongst others.

I suppose.

At times.

Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:48 pm

Mainly sheep fridge magnets.
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Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby braveneutral » Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:49 pm

Excellent. Are the sheep portrayed as being alive or slaughtered?
Asia Cup 2012 guru
SA vs Oz 2011 combined guru
SA vs Bangladesh Tests guru
NZ vs WI Tests guru
2014 French Open guru
T20 Blast 2014 guru
India vs WI ODIs 2014 guru
2016 French Open guru
2016 Wimbledon guru
2016 RL50 Cup guru
Premier League Final Placings Prediction League 2016/7 guru
England v SA ODIs 2017 guru
Guru.

D/L wrote:Words fail me for once.


17/04/17 - 'The day that history was made'

20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
User avatar
braveneutral
 
Posts: 20726
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:22 pm
Location: In between the hemispheres
Team(s) Supported: Northants amongst others.

I suppose.

At times.

Re: On the occasion of Alastair Cook passing 10000 Test runs

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:50 pm

Cheers bn! Number one is a big one though.
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