Graham Gooch’s 333 against India at Lord’s in 1990 was the first eye-wateringly big innings we can remember. The idea that one guy could score that many runs on his own in a Test match recalibrated what we thought was possible. There have only really been a handful of oversized
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Essex won the Bob Willis Trophy because they scored more first innings runs than Somerset in the final. Essex made 337-8 and Somerset made 301. Alastair Cook scored 172. Only one other Essex player passed 30. There is something satisfying about this; the idea that the best players are very
Continue readingAfter precisely one Test match, we’d seen all the shots (and non-shots) we were ever going to see from Alastair Cook. You know them all, but let’s list them anyway. Maybe in 20 years time you’ll revisit this article having forgotten one of them. The leave The forward defensive The
Continue readingLast week, writing about Alastair Cook, George Dobell briefly made the case that he maybe isn’t the easiest guy to open the batting with. The gist of the argument is that Cook’s quite a passive batsman and “novice openers see the scoreboard going nowhere and bowlers allowed to settle into
Continue readingIf we were to ask, ‘who has been your favourite England Test opener since Andrew Strauss retired?’ the answer is obvious. If you say anyone other than Alastair Cook, you are either (a) a contrarian hipster (b) not an England supporter or (c) mental. That’s an easy one. A far
Continue readingAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Technically, he hasn’t been away. It just rather feels like he has. Like stumps and grass, you take for granted that Alastair Cook will at least be present for England Tests – that’s a given – however, you also expect
Continue readingSo said Michael Vaughan after Cook had shelled an easy one early on. Where has he been looking? We’ve always felt like he drops a fair few – although maybe not by Vaughan’s own almost criminally low catching standards. We wouldn’t go so far as to say that Cook’s a
Continue readingAlastair Cook has said that the ECB “kind of let me out to dry a little bit” over Kevin Pietersen’s sacking and the ensuing brouhaha. Being ‘let out to dry’ makes him sound like a cat who’s mistaken bubble bath foam for solid land and now needs the back door
Continue readingAfter four-and-a-half years and 59 Test matches, Alastair Cook has finally thought to himself: “Wait a minute, this is a rubbish a job and I don’t actually have to do it.” It sometimes seems like every England captain’s career is simply a long, slow deduction that the honour and prestige
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