Trevor Bayliss: ‘Alastair Cook can catch Sachin Tendulkar’
England Test skipper Alastair Cook on Monday broke Sachin Tendulkar’s record to become youngest to complete 10,000 Test runs. Sri Lanka had made 475 all out in their second dig, thanks to a Dinesh Chandimal century.
England won the second Test by nine wickets with more than a day to spare to go an unassailable 2-0 up in the three-match series.
Become a subscriber to the Trinidad Express Newspapers for access to all our articles via our vNEWS.. Having been sat on 9,995 Test runs since his early dismissal in the first innings, Cook needed just 5 runs to pass the historic milestone.
The opener has established and maintained a rate of around 1,000 a year for the past decade, though, and Bayliss cites only an improbable decline in his lifelong appetite for runs that could rule Cook out of contention.
Meanwhile, Moeen Ali, who scored a crucial unbeaten knock of 155 runs in Durham, has leaped 12 places to claim a career best 35th position in the rankings for Test batsmen.
“I think a newer, younger team and winning with that team has given him a new lease of life”. At 31, Cook has several more years as an global cricketer left in him, but whether he will break Tendulkar’s all time aggregate Test record of 15,921 runs made in 200 Tests remains to be seen.
Cook, acknowledging the input of Essex and England mentor Graham Gooch, added: “It’s those seven o’clock nets with Goochie, it’s all that hard work that goes with it”.
England have named the same 12-man squad for the final Test, with Nottinghamshire pace bowler Jake Ball perhaps in contention to replace Steven Finn, who has taken four wickets at an average of 34.50 in the series. They are Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul (both West Indies), Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka) Ricky Ponting, Allan Border and Steve Waugh (all Australia), Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar and Rahul Dravid (all India) and Jacques Kallis (South Africa). “He is less than 32 years and if he plays for 6-8 more years he has got a very good chance”, the legendary batsman told NDTV.