Alastair Cook had the will to harvest runs and stay at the top for years

The very first ball Alastair Cook faced in Test cricket was short, wide and outside off. Of course he left it alone. He refused to play at either of the second and third, too. But the fourth he flicked to short-leg, the fifth he blocked and the sixth, which was short, he pulled fine for his first four runs. Already then, in those six balls, he showed the rudiments of the method that would make him England’s most prolific batsman: sound defence, shrewd judgment, a stubborn refusal to be suckered and a sprinkle of sweet timing, too. Cook was never pretty but there was grace in his simplicity.

When Cook hit the first pull, he took a second to savour the thought: “I’ve got four runs for England.” There were only another 12,250 to come, more than a third as many again as his mentor Graham Gooch, whose national record he beat.

That feeling, Cook said, was almost the only thing he could remember from that first innings in Nagpur, when he made 60 in three and a half hours. The rest of it passed in a blur. But it was Shanthakumaran Sreesanth who was bowling at him. He was making his Test debut too, and so were England’s spinners, Monty Panesar and Ian Blackwell.

In the years since, those three are long gone from the Test game, along with every other player in that match. Sreesanth was banned for spot-fixing, Panesar suffered troubles with his mental health, Blackwell went back to the county circuit after he realised he did not have it in him to find the commitment or the fitness he needed to play international cricket.

There are a lot of ways the game can defeat a player. But Cook has persisted – on and on, through streaks and slumps and seasons and summers, so long that the opening Test of England’s tour of Sri Lanka this winter will be the first he has missed in over 12 years.

That is a world record run of 158 consecutive Tests. Only Allan Border, who played 153, comes close. Enduring is an achievement in itself but it is not one critics always value. The longer you go on, the more you are taken for granted. Cook has persevered but has not always been revered. Among his peers Kevin Pietersen was a more challenging batsman, Ian Bell more charming, Joe Root more adept. Cook’s batting is clipped and capable, but his cricket was stubborn and obdurate. At his best he did not score runs but chisel them out: 235 not out at the Gabba, 294 at Edgbaston, 263 in Abu Dhabi. He was not making centuries, more erecting monuments.

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It was in one of those slumps, back in 2010, that Cook learned the lesson that has served him so well since. He was in a rut that summer, had barely made a hundred runs against Bangladesh and Pakistan. The problem was that he had been tinkering with his technique because he had convinced himself that it could, and should, be better than it was. Before his make-or-break Test at the Oval, when he was playing for his place, he decided it had all been a mistake. He returned to his first method, with a flickering backlift and a back-and-across shuffle, just as he had used in that debut match in Nagpur.

He made 110. “It proved to me I might not have had the perfect technique before,” he told Wisden, “but I tried something different and it was nowhere near as good.”

It was as if he had learned to accept the limitations of his game and, in doing so, mastered them. It made him a formidable batsman, an institution at the top of the order. He scored centuries against every country he played and in every country he played but the twin peaks of his career were in Australia in the winter of 2010, where he made 766 runs in five Tests, and in India two years later, where he made 562 in four.

England had not won a series in either country since the 1980s and, had it not been for Cook’s batting, they would have still not. In Australia he faced down Ben Hilfenhaus’s swing, Peter Siddle’s seam and Mitchell Johnson’s speed at the Gabba, when he batted from day three right through day four and into day five. He followed it with 148 at Adelaide and 189 in Sydney. In India in 2012, in his first series as captain, he scored 176 in a defeat at Ahmedabad with 122 and 190 in the victories in Mumbai and Kolkata.

It was tent-pole batting. Everything England did was built around him. The striking thing about those performances was that Cook was proving a point not only to the opposition but to his own teammates, too. He showed them that the thing could be done, that the series could be won, that Australia’s quicks could be tamed and India’s spinners mastered – and all with just a glance, a pull, a cut, the odd drive, a block, of course, and a leave – a bare handful of shots and a lot of bloody-minded will.

Alastair Cook had the will to harvest runs and stay at the top for years | Andy Bull

Alastair Cook’s remarkable England career in numbers