There is an argument that the term ‘GOAT’ – ‘Greatest Of All Time’ – has recently become quite overused in a sporting context; after all, the very nature of the description means only one person can actually hold it.
However, when it comes to English cricket, there is very little debate that the holder is one Alastair Cook, who, over the last two decades, carved out a career so glorious that topping his legacy will be a near-impossible task.
From the thousands upon thousands of runs that came off his bat to the silverware he won, from the records he set to the honours he was awarded, this is a look at some of the numbers generated by one of cricket’s very best.
01/03/2006: A famous day
Cook was originally scheduled to spend most of February and March 2006 in the Caribbean with the England Lions, and indeed made quite the start to that tour with a century in a warm-up match against an Antigua XI.
However, he batted only one innings of the opening match against the West Indies A team in St John’s, before he received a call to fly more than 8,500 miles east to Nagpur, India, and join up with the senior England team.
Accompanied by Owais Shah and another unassuming youngster by the name of James Anderson, Cook went straight into the starting XI for the first Test, becoming the 630th man to play in the format for England.
He made his debut alongside Ian Blackwell and Monty Panesar, and although he hit the ground running with a first-innings 60, it was his exploits in the second dig, where he scored 104, that truly foreshadowed his greatness.
3 honours
Cook’s services to his sport were such that he was recognised with individual honours, and accompanying meetings with royalty, no fewer than three times across his career.
His first visit to Buckingham Palace came in December 2011, when he was rewarded with an MBE for his sparkling Ashes series the previous winter and subsequent contribution to England’s rise to world number one Test side.
A little over five years after that, he was upgraded to CBE a few days before relinquishing the Three Lions’ red-ball captaincy, having skippered his country in a then-record 59 Tests, winning seven of his 16 series in charge.
Finally, he was given the highest of honours in February 2019 when he was knighted by the Queen, five months after he had retired from international cricket as England’s highest Test run-scorer of all time.
34,045 all-format senior runs
On the subject of record-breaking runs, scoring thousands upon thousands of them is what Cook did best throughout his career, racking up over 34,000 of them at senior level in all three formats.
The vast majority, 26,643 were unsurprisingly scored in first-class cricket, and contained within that total are the 12,472 Test runs he hit in 161 matches to cement his position as the most prolific Englishman of all time.
However, he also enjoyed a productive time of it in the white-ball arena too, notching 6,510 List A and 892 T20 runs, of which 3,204 and 61 were scored in 92 ODIs and four international T20s, respectively.
Although not one known for his explosive ability, Cook did still hit a single shortest-format century, posting exactly 100 not out off just 57 balls against Surrey at the Oval in 2009, meaning he retires having hit tons in all formats.
1 Test wicket
Although obviously named as a batter in practically every single one of his 562 senior professional appearances, Cook did reveal a handy secret talent in one of his Tests at Trent Bridge in 2014.
With the pitch totally placid to the point that Jimmy Anderson had managed to hit 81, both sides had racked up scores of almost 500 in their first innings before India reached 387-8 in their second dig, leading by 348.
Between them, England’s bowlers had sent down a total of 281 overs across both innings before Cook relieved them by bringing himself on, with his medium pace complete with a comic impersonation of Bob Willis’s run-up.
Whether taking things seriously or not by then, Cook managed to snare the wicket of Ishant Sharma, caught sharply behind by Matt Prior, as he logged a Test bowling average that will forever remain at just 7.00.
9 pieces of Essex silverware
Cook’s appearances for his county were forcibly limited as his international influence grew, but across a 20-year career, he found time to contribute to Essex winning six titles, as well as three additional trophies.
Three were in the red-ball arena, with the 2017 and 2019 County Championships joined by the 2020 Bob Willis Trophy, while he also played his part in victorious Sunday League campaigns in 2005 and 2006.
His remaining title was the 2008 Friends Provident Trophy, and although those six are his top-division pieces of silverware, Cook also contributed to three more Division Two trophies across two formats.
In 2008, Essex finished atop the second tier in the Sunday League, while they were promoted from Division Two of the Championship in 2016 and won the curiously-organised competition of the same name in 2021, with the Championship that year following a ‘conferences’ format.
159 consecutive Tests
Of all his achievements throughout his career, there was little Cook seemed to enjoy more than beating Australia, and even with his Ashes scoring exploits aside, he holds another record which he passed an Australian to break.
Upon taking to the field in the second Test of two against Pakistan in 2018, Cook continued a run of playing in 154 consecutive matches in the format, making him the world-record holder of that particular statistic.
The man he beat was none other than Allan Border, with the former Australian captain being the sort of character who no doubt loved losing his record to an Englishman.
It seems likely that the record, which Cook extended to 159 before retiring, will stand for a long time yet, with the West Indies’ Kraigg Brathwaite being the highest-ranked current player, though even his unbroken run stands at ‘just’ 77 matches.
73.80 and 57.96: Worcestershire and the Windies’ worst nightmare
Cook may have scored most prolifically against Australia in Test cricket, but that came with the caveat that he also played more matches against them than any other nation.
A better barometer for which opponents suffered most heavily at his hands would be his respective averages, and by that measure, it is the West Indies, who he hit 1,739 runs at 57.96 against, who come out on top.
Domestically, another team beginning with W felt Cook’s wrath more strongly than any other, with Worcestershire conceding 738 runs to him, at a staggering average of 73.80.
Concurrently, there is also no venue above New Road in his averages on any ground he played more than three matches at, with his figure of 95.87 standing clear of his 94.75 at Fenner’s in Cambridge.
