The retirement of Alastair Cook has gotten plenty of response over in England and around the world, Jimmy Anderson was even moved to tears talking about his old mate. And amidst all the glowing references we were treated to one last masterclass in Cookie’s final innings. Bit of a fairytale ending that was. Passed fifty in the first innings then bagged 147 in the second. Mate, you’ve simply gotta love a happy farewell. This a fellow who began his Test career with a hundred on debut too.

The sight of Alastair Cook taking guard had become a commonplace thing in Test matches. That easy left-handed stance, with his soft front foot. Many batsmen have tried to master the art of the perfect defensive shot but few ever got closer than this bloke did. Cook could play some gorgeous strokes, particularly what he did square of the wicket, but the real beauty of what he did was in his ability to stick in and grind out runs. True opening batting. All about a brilliant eye and flawless composure.

In terms of England records, he’s got most of them. Most runs, most hundreds, most matches, most matches as captain, longest innings. Didn’t quite crack the top five highest scores but his 294 against India in Birmingham in 2011 is as close as any Englishman has come to a triple century since Graham Gooch nearly 30 years ago.

Naturally the English folk are talking him up as an all-time great and as Test cricket’s highest scoring left-hander, surpassing Kumar Sangakarra in that final innings, there’s a decent case to be made. Cook had his ups and downs along the way. The era from around 2009-2012 in which he scored 16 centuries in four years was easily his peak period. In those four years alone he scored 4423 runs at an average of 55.28, numbers as good as anyone else in the world at the time. Of course, the following two years his average was only in the 33 range. He’d had a resurgence the last couple seasons but before this swansong he was on a run of 16 innings in which he only passed fifty once.

That’s not to diminish the bloke, everybody has their ups and downs including the very best of them. Cook’s legacy isn’t going to be recalled in that Tendulkar, Lara or Kallis calibre though. He just wasn’t quite at that level over the course of his career. Even as an English great it’s debatable where he sits against folks like Gower, Boycott, Hammond, Cowdrey, Hutton, Sutcliffe, etc. Recency bias does a lot for a bugger. As does the fact that he played more games, batting more times, than any other English Test cricketer. However where Alastair Cook does undoubtedly stand amongst the best in the business is as a specialist opening batsman.

Cook retires with more than 2000 more runs as an opener than any other bat in Test history. He’s scored more tons as an opener than anyone not named Sunil Gavaskar and he’s got 75 more innings as an opener than any other joker too – which in this case is very relevant because it shows how much longevity he was able to provide. The last dozen years the argument for England has been ‘who’ll open the batting with Cook?’ and that’s a luxury for any nation.

Here are Alastair Cook’s stats specifically as a Test opener:

278 INNS | 11845 RUNS | 294 HS | 44.86 AVE | 31 100s | 55 50s | 9 0s

Since the exact date of his debut, New Zealand has had 18 different Test openers. Not one of them has averaged over 40 in that time and the combined total doesn’t make particularly pretty reading:

378 INNS | 10749 RUNS | 225 HS | 29.44 AVE | 16 100s | 56 50s | 34 0s

Bear in mind that Cook was batting with another opener each time too, scoring their own runs in addition. He alone dwarfs the kiwi collection. You can probably disregard the averages since that’s dragged down by the strugglers but to think that Cook scored almost double the hundreds and more runs than the entire nation of Aotearoa during his career is a bit of a shocker. And as for that ducks total… yikes.

The Blackcaps do have some light at the end of the tunnel here, to be fair. Tom Latham is dominating the stats within those guys, averaging 38.93 as an opener with six of those 16 tons and the most fifties also. Jeet Raval, the other incumbent, has still yet to hit a ton in Tests but his average is only a shade below Latham’s as an opener so with that comes promise for the future. Neither’s settled in their role yet by any means but this is as stable as it’s been in years.

Granted, the partnership itself could use some work. Latham and Raval have opened together 18 times with limited success together. Best partnership of 83 and an average partnership of 30 runs. Five times past 50/0 in those 18 attempts. There’s a bit of alternating success there, one fails and the other goes on kinda thing. For example the six times Raval has passed fifty, Latham’s scores are: 1, 0, 10, 6, 50 & 22. It takes time to develop that relationship.

Alastair Cook has had his share of rotating partners, particularly since Andrew Strauss retired. Strauss and Cook opened the batting 117 times together and averaged a pretty magnificent 40 runs for the first wicket when they did. 12 century partnerships and 18 half-centuries. He’s also put on 100-run opening stands with: Haseeb Hameed, Nick Compton, Michael Vaughan, Ben Duckett, Moeen Ali, Alex Hales, Keaton Jennings, Adam Lyth and Ian Trott. For the duration of Cook’s career, the Blackcaps have seven 100-run opening partnerships involving four different pairs (Guptill/Latham, McCullum/McIntosh, Fulton/Rutherford & Guptill/McCullum). 25 different opening partnerships in a twelve and a half years. It’s not been great, to keep on the level.

But then that’s why Cook was such a remarkable opening batsman. He took care of business consistently no matter who he was working with. Only Bangladesh have had fewer opening partners since Cook’s debut than England has had and that’s in fewer than half as many Tests. Meanwhile only Australia and India have more 100-run opening partnerships in that time and you already know that batting tends to be a little easier in those two countries compared to soggy England… in the first couple innings, at least.

Some context for those NZ numbers to finish on now, warning this is not easy viewing…

OPENING BATTING NUMEROS BY NATION SINCE ALASTAIR COOK’S DEBUT

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