Five Greatest Moments of Alastair Cook's Career
You had to have the nimble feet of a petite frame like the Bradman's and Tendulkar's to dance down the pitch to greatness.
You had to be from the elite counties of Division One to make a mark in the national side. You had to be an aggressor to succeed as a skipper in the bloodhound era of the Clarkes and the McCullums. You had to take on the bowlers with the ferocity of the Sehwags and the Haydens to pile runs as an opener.
Throughout his career, Alastair Cook stared down a huge check-list of attributes that made no sense to him.
Yet somehow he, built well over six feet of height, tallied the sixth highest aggregate Test runs.
He stuck with Essex through both adversity and glory, when he smiled at the overwhelming odds to break through the Final Frontier, deemed too big an ask even for the grumpier Waugh.
By the time he was done stacking the most number of centuries bearing the brunt of the new ball with a calm dead bat every time he walked out, it still did not make sense, but perceptions were shattered.
The Chef, a figure of awkward misfit and perhaps too ahead or too late for his time, decides to walk off the pitch one last time in the final Test against India at The Oval. Here are the five greatest moments from England's bright-eyed manifestation of grit, character and everything the English cricket was not about in a pre-Cook era.
#5 Colossus Down Under
Not since the summer of 1986-87 had England won the hallowed urn in Australia for more than two decades. After years of the same old re-run of the script of four-day humiliations against Border, Waugh and Ponting's men, England needed someone special to clinch the series for them in the country they found the most daunting.
Cook battered the hostile crowds, the fast bowling cartel which had been pumped after Peter Siddle's famous birthday hat-trick, overtook the Don to score the highest Test score at the 'Gabba by racking up 235* in England's slightly respectable total of 1/517.
This effort came in the face of a 221 run first innings deficit.
By the time he had scored an unbeaten 135 at Adelaide, he had registered 371 runs in 1,022 minutes of play on Australian soil without a bowler being able to get him off the pitch.
By the time he had made Sydney a fortress of his own by scoring 189, he had accumulated 766 runs for the series.
England's demons of decades had been exorcised by the calmest of operators, as they humbled Australia to a 3-1 defeat, the second of their three in a row.