Alastair Cook produced the longest innings in England’s Test history, and the third-longest of all time, to stamp his authority on the first Test against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi, and lay down a marker for his team’s expectations in the next two Tests.
By the time he was finally dismissed, top-edging a sweep to square leg off the offspin of Shoaib Malik in the final 40 minutes of the fourth day’s play, Cook had rumbled his way along to a monumental innings of 263 – his third Test double-century and second only to his 294 against India at Edgbaston in 2011.
In all he batted for 836 minutes, four minutes shy of 14 solid hours. The innings may have finished some way shy of Hanif Mohammad’s 970-minute epic for Pakistan against West Indies in 1957-58, but it remains streets ahead of all other English contenders in Asian conditions – so often considered the final frontier for Western teams.
For Cook, however, these conditions are his home from home. Eight of his 28 Test hundreds have been recorded in Asia, equal to Jacques Kallis, whose runs-record of 2058 he also overhauled shortly before his dismissal. Mike Gatting’s 207 at Madras in 1984-85 is now a distant second-best among English scores in overseas Tests against subcontinental opposition.
The match situation is now utterly moribund – by the close England, on 569 for 8, led Pakistan’s first-innings 523 for 8 declared by 46 runs with two wickets still in hand. The one real opportunity for this to be a grandstand finish had been for England to bat once, bat huge, and hope that Pakistan collapsed in a heap on the final day.
It was always a fanciful prospect, but it gave Cook licence to bat, bat and bat some more. Not that he really needed any further invitation, of course. Not since Cook’s own Essex mentor, Graham Gooch, made 333 against India at Lord’s in 1990 has an England batsman notched up a triple-century, and until his late-evening aberration, few would have bet against him doing so.
Cook’s Edgbaston epic was the most recent innings to threaten that landmark, and his obvious desolation at missing out on that occasion spoke volumes for his appetite. He knows he may never get a better opportunity, with the pitch and the match situation entirely in favour of his obduracy, and his self-admonishment at giving it away again with an uncharacteristically meek lap was plain. The fact that Malik may well have bowled a no-ball that went uncalled by umpire Paul Reiffel will only add to his heartache.
But all things are relative when you have scored 263 to turn a grim team situation into a triumph of run-harvesting. Pakistan have been kept out in the 38-degree heat for 196.3 overs already, longer than they have had to endure for three complete decades, while the toils of Zulfiqar Babar summed up their day. He eventually claimed his first wicket of the innings after 68.5 deliveries, when Jos Buttler had a dart and chipped a loose catch into the covers.
By then, Malik had struck twice to end the long, long wait for a spin bowler to claim a scalp in this match 1,021 balls all told with Ben Stokes the first to succumb, as he was lured down the track to be bowled past the outside edge. He fell for a sparky 57 from 87 balls, one of a number of encouraging cameos that, the conditions notwithstanding, augur well for the remainder of the series.
Cook did not have everything his own way in the course of his innings and, after surviving one chance off Zulfiqar at deep square leg on 147 on the third afternoon, he needed a second clear slice of good fortune to make it through the first half-hour.
Once again Wahab Riaz transcended the conditions with another admirably wholehearted spell of quick bowling – his later spell of reverse swing, which accounted for Jonny Bairstow with the second new-ball looming and gave Stokes the most torrid of welcomes, was as fast and threatening as anything the game has yet seen. But on 173, Cook inside-edged through to Sarfraz Ahmed, the wicketkeeper, who fumbled the opportunity low to his right.
As if pre-ordained, Friday prayers allowed Cook an extended break of an hour at lunch in which to freshen up and change his clothes – not that he seemed to exude a single bead of sweat all day. However, upon the resumption, Cook endured probably the closest thing to a sketchy half-hour as he has produced all match.
With Rahat Ali’s left-armers disrupting his rhythmic prodding defence, Cook edged one chance inches short of the keeper, before unfurling a pair of reverse-sweeps against the toiling Zulfiqar that were as close as he came all innings to anything resembling improvisation. The loss of his batting partner, Joe Root, perhaps helped to refocus Cook’s mind. Root, England’s batsman of the year, eventually chased a wide one from Rahat to depart, furiously, for 85 from 143 balls, having seemed firmly on course for his ninth Test hundred in only his 33rd Test.
Root’s eye for a scoring opportunity was quite unlike anything witnessed from any of the other England batsmen on show. From the outset, he unfurled a repertoire of strokes including cuts, sweeps, reverse-sweeps and open-faced drives, not to mention a rare uppercut over the cordon as Wahab’s effort ball was impudently dispatched.
Pakistan’s late scalps were due reward for their toil but Cook’s magnificence transcended all other factors – the heat, the pitch, the opposition. The final day offers a chance for England to turn the screw on a fifth-day pitch, with Adil Rashid, not out alongside Stuart Broad at the close, doubtless itching to atone for his first-innings drubbing. But the life in this match departed with the England captain. He has been the heart and soul of his team, and this contest.
