Alastair Cook has joined an elite club in becoming of one of the five players in Test history to achieve this feat. The 33-year-old opener, who had scored 110 against India at Nagpur, scored a 147 in his final innings at the Oval on Monday, 10 September.
Alastair Cook became only the second player to make 50-plus scores in both innings of a player’s first and final Test matches. The first player to achieve the feat was South Africa’s Bruce Mitchell, who scored 88 & 61* on Test debut and 99 & 56 in his final Test.
When he got to 76, Alastair Cook surpassed Kumar Sangakkara’s tally of 12,400 runs to become the highest-scoring left-handed batsman in Test cricket. Cook drew the curtains down on his Test career with an aggregate of 12,472 runs which makes him the 5th highest run-scorers in Test cricket.
With his 147 in the second innings of the Oval Test, Alastair Cook finished his Test career as the second-highest run-getter in Test matches against India; only Australia’s Ricky Ponting scored more runs against India.
Prior to the final innings of the Oval Test, Alastair Cook and Joe Root had batted in 8 innings each in this series, managing aggregates of 180 runs and 194 runs respectively. However, in the last outing in the series, both the senior pros individually scored hundreds and combined to stitch together what would be the highest partnership of the series.
