I am with you matt can't see him carrying on after the next ashes.
also it is a double edge sword, cook is less appreciated overseas because of the claim of him being the youngest to every 1000 interval
sun had a list of 10K runs by innings and cook is 8th out of 11 only border, Steve waugh and Chanderpaul took longer.
and in the fastest to 9K runs he is 11 slowest out of 14.
G Smith, Younis Khan all quicker than him.
fastest to 8000k against cook is low down the list, 20 out of 26.
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/conten ... 83187.htmlGooch, boycott and gower were slower.
Miandad, sehwag, sobers, richards, clarke, AB, inzamam ul haq and kp all quicker.
the reason people can't appreciate him is because he only scored 10,000 quickly due to the fact England plays loads of games, in terms of stats he quite below loads of players in the world.
really the amount of runs shouldn't have any bearing on greatness considering if runs and wickets were everything a bloody good chance Ishant Sharma going to be supposedly better than most seam bowlers because he taken 201 wickets and counting.
ishant sharma essentially will take loads of wickets because of his young age and playing loads of matches.
reckon cook will have a look after the next ashes and see how many runs he needs for the record, if he still need 2-3K he might retire if the team loses the ashes but if he still in good form and his close to breaking the record he might stay on.
but really he might need to play 220+ test to break the record which at the moment is touch and go.