Cook’s retirement is the end of a tradition

Josh Davis
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

The end of an era. The last of his kind. These are sentiments often heard when the curtain falls on a momentous sporting career. But in the case of Alastair Cook, they feel especially apt. Because with his retirement an era truly is closing: one that stretches well beyond the confines of even his capacious career. History will remember him as the last of a familiar cricketing breed, the English Test match opener.

Cook’s first, and only durable, opening partner was Andrew Strauss, who started his Test career alongside Marcus Trescothick, whose mentor was Mike Atherton. Atherton often opened with Gooch, who had begun with Boycott. Boycott was twice joined at the top of the order by Colin Cowdrey, whose first tour had been Len Hutton’s last. Hutton was the spiritual heir of Herbert Sutcliffe, partner to the greatest of them all, Jack Hobbs. And Hobbs, pre-Sutcliffe, habitually went in first with Wilfred Rhodes, who had played with the first of them all, WG Grace.

Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe, on the 1924/5 Ashes tour during which they shared over 1,300 runs. Photo

The chain may not be unbroken, but the pattern is unmistakable. For over a century, since the earliest days of Test cricket, England have had champion players to open their innings. From the dominant to the dour, the stylish to the stolid, an English Test team has been led from the front.

English Test openers have blunted, battered and broken opposition attacks. In perennially testing home conditions they have survived. And in the game’s harshest arena, the Australian tour, they have thrived. Hobbs and Sutcliffe, who shared 1,307 runs on the 1924/5 tour, begat Boycott and Edrich (1305 runs in 1970/1), Chris Broad’s trifecta of centuries in 1986/7, Michael Vaughan’s chart-topping 2002/3 and Cook’s own victory odyssey in 2010/11.

It is not that England have failed to produce middle-order batsmen of the highest calibre. You could fill two all-time engine rooms with the talents of Hammond, Compton, May, Barrington, Gower, Pietersen and Root. But the quintessence of English batsmanship has been in its openers. The greatest battles, the greatest achievements, the greatest partnerships belong to the openers. The guts — Atherton vs. Donald, Boycott and Close vs. Holding, Gooch carrying his bat against Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh and Patterson — and the glory — Hutton’s 364, Gooch’s 454-run Test, Boycott’s home-ground 100th hundred.

Sir Len Hutton, scorer of England’s record Test innings. Photo

Alastair Cook was forged in this tradition: mentored by a great English opener in Gooch, and partnered for half of his career by a good one, Andrew Strauss. He drunk deeply of the unique demands of facing the most difficult conditions, combating fast bowlers at their freshest, and shrugging off the inevitable early failures. He ground out the vital contributions, compiled the monumental innings — his five double centuries bettered only for England by Hammond’s seven — and had his all-conquering, era-defining series: powering England to the prize of an away Ashes triumph with 766 runs at the unthinkable average of 127.66 in 2010/11. Only Bradman (twice), Hammond again and Mark Taylor have ever done better in the game’s oldest rubber.

Now Cook has gone, and a tradition dies with him. He was from the last generation whose professional upbringing was focused on the red ball game, with Test cricket at the pinnacle. None of the contenders who have emerged in the last, hybrid decade has shown the technique or temperament needed. And in cricket’s get-rich-quick era, it is hard to imagine an opener being offered the red ball experience that could inspire even a fraction of Cook’s serenity and permanence.

England may produce more great Test openers. But they will be the creations of a new era, for what is increasingly an alien game from that played between Hobbs’s debut in 1908 and Cook’s in 2006. They will be players who seek to blast their way past the challenge of the new ball: more Ben Duckett than Haseeb Hameed, more Colin Milburn than Geoffrey Boycott. It will be a style that means faster scoring rates, more frequent collapses and faster-finishing Test matches. It points the way to the inevitability of a four-day future for the format. None of this is necessarily a bad thing. But it is the end of an era all the same, and one in which even the monumental Cook has been just one mighty oak among many.

Josh Davis

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I write for others for a living, and on here for fun

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