XtraTime Web Desk: Alastair Cook, out of form before the final Test against India, hit 71 and 147 to finish off his career as the 10th-ranked batsman in Test cricket.
Cook, whose 12,472 runs in 161 matches made him the fifth-most prolific run-scorer in Test history – behind Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid – rose 11 spots in the latest MRF Tyres ICC Test Player Rankings for batsmen.
This after he had slipped following scores of 13, 0, 21, 29, 17, 17 and 12 in the first four Tests.
It was a memorable swansong for Cook, whose 218 runs in England’s 118-run win made him the Player of the Match as well, and he achieved the rare distinction of scoring a century in his debut as well as farewell Test.
In a five-Test series with only eight hundreds, four centuries came in the teams’ second innings of the final Test, with tons from Cook, Joe Root (125), KL Rahul (149) and Rishabh Pant (114).
Root gained one spot to move to No.4 even as Kohli, who ended a prolific series with a duck, remains the No.1 batsman. Rahul gained 16 spots to reach No.19, while Pant, playing his third Test, went up 63 positions to get to No.111 with a career-high 285 points.
On to the bowlers then, and there was no displacing James Anderson from the top spot as his five wickets for the match helped him remain No.1.
Anderson, who went past Glenn McGrath’s mark of 563 Test wickets to become the most prolific Test wicket-taker among fast bowlers, reached 899 points by the end of the series. That’s just four off his all-time high of 903, and 17 more than No.2 Kagiso Rabada of South Africa.