England's highest Test run scorer and the captain who won in Australia and India
CricketThere has never been an England batsman quite like Alastair Cook, and there may never be another.
Born in Gloucester in 1984 and raised in Essex, Cook made his Test debut in Nagpur in 2006 after being flown out mid tour as cover. He scored 60 and a century on debut, and essentially did not give the opener's job back for the next 12 years. By the time he retired in 2018 he had 33 Test centuries and 12,472 runs, both England records that still stand.
His captaincy tenure had two defining peaks. In the winter of 2010 to 2011 he made 766 runs in an Ashes series as England won in Australia for the first time in 24 years, and two years later he led a rebuilding side to a 2 to 1 series win in India, the most improbable English cricket triumph of the decade.
He was famously unflappable, a man who treated every ball, every innings and every press conference with the same calm economy. Teammates joked that his heart rate never varied. He retired on his own terms in 2018 with a final innings century at The Oval, one of the most perfect goodbyes the game has ever seen.
Now farming in Essex, commentating for TNT Sports and BBC Test Match Special, and knighted in 2019 for his services to cricket, Cook brings the same quiet authority to the speaking circuit that defined his career at the crease.
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