A couple of years ago, Alastair Cook explained the individual goal that kept him ticking during his England career. “In my opinion, you have to have something which is attainable as a personal thing, which doesn’t go above the team,” he told the BBC. “I used to run at five o’clock in the morning. The reason I ran at tough times was because I wanted to score 10,000 Test runs.”
It took him a decade to get there, at 31 the youngest to do it, the first Englishman to the mark, prompting a look at what would come next. With time on his side and a healthy Test calendar for England, could he overtake Sachin Tendulkar, clear at the top with 15,921 runs? “There is no reason he couldn’t if his heart is still in it,” said Trevor Bayliss, Cook’s head coach at the time. But 10,000 was the figure, the early morning wake-up call. “I scored 10,000 runs and something just changed a little bit. I didn’t have another goal to get.” Cook retired from international cricket two years later.
