Alastair Cook's Agonising Hundred Against West Indies Was Effective, Not Pretty

How players respond when their backs are against the wall and the odds are all stacked against them is what sets apart the good players from the very good. Alastair Cook has waited two years to score a hundred in Test cricket, but he finally managed to get it against the West Indies in Barbados.

After winning the toss and choosing to bat, England started somewhat dubiously. Jonathan Trott continued to struggle and was dismissed for a three-ball duck, and Gary Ballance followed soon afterward. Ian Bell went without scoring, and Joe Root stuck around for just under an hour before he too was dismissed.

It wasn’t until Moeen Ali joined Cook out in the middle that England managed to knuckle down. The pitch probably spun a bit more than England expected, but they weren’t expected to fall apart quite so spectacularly. Thanks to their captain, though, England have the foundations of putting together a solid total.

It was a belligerent effort from the skipper that has been three Tests in the making. As the series progressed, Cook has gotten better and better. After a disappointing outing in the first Tests, Cook responded with back-to-back fifties in the second Test and capped things off with a ton in the third and final Test. 

It takes a special effort from a special player to score such a painstaking hundred. While it was agonising to watch, it takes some serious concentration to not waft at the bad balls, to leave the wide ones, to not get frustrated when you’re not playing scoring shots and to keep calm when your teammates having seemingly lost the plot.

Cook needlessly got out in the final over of the day. Playing the same cut shot that had brought him plenty of success throughout the day, he edged the ball through to the keeper and was sent on his way. That means England have a tough road ahead in this Test, as he finished Day 1 on 240 for seven.

Despite not having scored a century in Tests for two years prior to this effort, though, Cook is still breaking records.

He is also steadily closing in on Graham Gooch’s record of top Test run scorer for England, having already scored more hundreds and more fifties than his mentor. He has comfortably passed Kevin Pietersen as the man with the most hundreds for England, and Cook almost certainly has a few more years left in the tank.

After the 5-0 Ashes drubbing in 2013, Cook was under some serious pressure, both as captain and as a player. His form only blipped for a short while before he rekindled it, though. His captaincy is never going to set the world alight, but Cook is exactly what England needs at the helm of their Test team. He doesn’t like to draw attention to himself; he focuses on the task at hand, and he gets it done in his typically plucky way.

England have a tough summer ahead with Tests against New Zealand and Australia at home before travelling to the United Arab Emirates to play Pakistan and South Africa later in the year. Cook will almost certainly face a few bumps along the way, but as he has shown over the course of the last few months, he almost always bounces back. It’s not always pretty, but it’s incredibly effective.