Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen: England’s chalk and cheese with incredible figures

Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, England’s most reliable batsmen in recent history, equaled a record and broke another as they thwarted the Indian bowlers in the second Test at Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium.

Alastair Cook (left) and Kevin Pietersen shared a defiant 206-run stand at the Wankhede stadium, thereby entering the record books © PTI

Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, England’s most reliable batsmen in recent history, equaled a record and broke another as they thwarted the Indian bowlers in the second Test at Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium.

Both scored their 22nd Test centuries in tandem on Day Two of the Test, thereby equaling the English record for the highest number of centuries in Tests. They also broke Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli’s record of the highest third-wicket partnership (194 runs) at Wankhede, sharing a defiant 206-run stand on a twisting and turning track.

Cook, the textbook Test batsman, was the first to get to three figures as he caressed a delivery from Harbhajan Singh flighted outside the off to the long-off fence. Whatever you can do, I can do better, said Pietersen, as he reached his century in Harbhajan’s next over in as unorthodox a way as possible – with a reverse sweep! He had also faced over hundred balls fewer than Cook.

The contrasting pair thus checked into a privileged league of Englishmen who have scored 22 Test tons – one which houses greats such as Geoffrey Boycott, Wally Hammond and Colin Cowdrey. The way Cook and Pietersen are going about their business, they are more than certain of breaking that record and creating a league of their own.

List of Englishmen who have scored more than 15 Test centuries:

*Updated until Cook’s 122 and Pietersen’s 186 in the ongoing second Test against India at Mumbai.

Cook reached the landmark in his 85th Test match and 149th innings, at 49.24. Only Wally Hammond got there faster, in 140 innings, at a whopping average of 58.45. Even the swashbuckling Pietersen took more innings – 154. And he is five years Cook’s senior. Geoffrey Boycott, who was watching from the commentary box at Wankhede, took 193 innings and Colin Cowdrey, 188.

Cook is just 27, and has plenty of playing years ahead of him. He has already gone past legendary names like Ken Barrington, Graham Gooch, Len Hutton, David Gower, Dennis Compton and Herbert Sutcliffe, among others, in scoring Test hundreds.  As I had mentioned in one of my earlier articles, Cook is also one of the youngest batsmen to get to as many tons. Only the great Sachin Tendulkar had more tons (25) at this age.  The mind boggles what he could achieve in the years to come.

Cook is easily one of the most underrated players in Test cricket today. If Test-match batting is just about accumulating the runs without anyone noticing it; if it is about knowing your strengths and limitations, and using them astutely to get the results for your team, then it is difficult to find a better batsman in the world than Alastair Cook.

Cook plays primarily on his more educated backfoot and punches the ball on both sides with ease. He is one of the better players of spin in the current England line-up and this has been evident so far in the series. Cook has taken on the Indian spinners confidently, cutting them and driving them with a pleasure unseen in the rest of the England team. He has an inconspicuous way of accumulating his runs. If a cricket newbie was to watch his batting, he would be shocked to find out that the guy has almost 7000 runs under his belt.

His partner-in-crime, meanwhile, is the polar opposite. Pietersen was under pressure coming into the second Test, scoring a dismal 17 and two in the first Test. Plus, left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha clearly had his number going into the match after dismissing him in both innings at Ahmedabad. But the talismanic batsman and scripter of many an England win took the pressure in his stride and launched a counter-attack against the three-pronged Indian spin attack. Pietersen was confident in his strokeplay and not afraid to use his feet. Like Cook, he used the depth of the crease to perfection on his way to a potentially match-winning 186 off 231 balls (20×4, 4×6). He was to fall to Ojha yet again, but not before hitting the left-armer for 74 runs off 105 balls including three huge sixes. More impressively, 163 of his 186 runs came off India’s three primary spinners.

If England are to take anything from this series, this rather odd pair is certain to play a vital role in ensuring that – in their own inimitable styles. Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen are England’s chalk and cheese, their main weapons against the three-headed spin monster that’s currently at MS Dhoni’s disposal.

(Jaideep Vaidya is a multiple sports buff and Editorial Consultant at Cricket Country. He has a B.E. in Electronics Engineering, but that isn’t fooling anybody. He started writing on sports during his engineering course and fell in love with it. The best day of his life came on April 24, 1998, when he witnessed birthday boy Sachin Tendulkar pummel a Shane Warne-speared Aussie attack from the stands during the Sharjah Cup Final. A diehard Manchester United fan, you can follow him on Twitter @jaideepvaidya. He also writes a sports blog – The Mullygrubber )

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