Strauss lauds Cook as England’s ‘greatest player’

LONDON: Alastair Cook was lauded as England’s “greatest ever player” by former opening partner Andrew Strauss during his final Test before international retirement.

Cook was thrust straight into the action in his farewell Test after England captain Joe Root won the toss and elected to bat against India at the Oval on Friday.Strauss, now the England and Wales Cricket Board director, addressed the England team before handing Cook a cap numbered 161 to mark the final international match of a 12-year international career.

A video montage produced by the Professional Cricketers’ Association, featuring the favourite recollections of many of the 74 players with whom Cook has shared his Test career, was shown to the batsman on Thursday.Cook came into this match having scored 12,254 Test runs at an average of 44.88 including 32 hundreds.

That average is not the highest by an England batsman, with Yorkshire opener Herbert Sutcliffe posting a mark of 60.73 in 54 Tests in the 1920s and 1930s.

Yet Strauss, perhaps out of understandable loyalty to his former opening partner, told Sky Sports when asked about Cook’s record: “That average, that consistency, the number of times he’s passed fifty and obviously the hundreds and the match-winning hundreds he’s got, all combine to make him England’s greatest player ever in my opinion.”

Cook scored a hundred on his Test debut, against India at Nagpur in 2006, and Virat Kohli, the current India captain, said at the toss: “We have seen too much of him sometimes.

“He has been a great player for England. What he has done as an opener has been outstanding and he will go down as one of the greatest openers to have played the game.”