Alastair Cook hot on Sunny's tail

Captain Cook's assault on the record books continues as he just overtook Graeme Smith as the second leading run scorer by an opening batsman in Test history. He now stands just 517 runs behind the great Sunil Gavaskar.

Cook also jumped ahead of Ricky Ponting into second place for most runs scored by a Test batsman under the age of 32.

Calypso and me had dubbed him as the real  "Mr.Cricket"

I just knew he would come good : Class is permanent , Form is temporary 

With their win in the first Test at Durban, Alastair Cook has now captained the England team to 18 victories, tied with Mike Brearley for fourth all time by an English captain. Peter May is up next with 20 wins.

He finishes 2015 with 1364 Test runs scored, third most, behind only Smith and Root. This is now the fourth time Cook has scored 1000+ Test runs in a year.

It was great to see Cook back to his best after a really tough 2014.

As Graham Gooch would say "Fill yer boots son"

Does Cook have any chance of surpassing Sachin's record for most Test runs? He is presently 6134 runs behind.

Chris Morris is mobbed by his team-mates after a stunning catch to remove Alastair Cook,

           

That was about as good as it gets. Although we are just two days into 2016, that slip catch may well be the best we see all year. Morris dived at full stretch to his weaker side and plucked a ball traveling at the rate of knots just inches off the turf. A magnificent catch. A shame for Cook as he was looking very good and scoring at a quick rate - for Cook anyway.

Although Cook's had a rough go of it in the series against South Africa so far (an average of 17 and a high score of 43), he is now just 117 runs away from becoming the first Englishman to reach 10,000 runs in Test cricket,

This series as been a failure for Cook to be honest and I think even he would be the first person to come out and say that. Every player goes through rough spells and it's just like cook after having failed so far, to in the final test go and smash the 117 he needs to beak that record.

www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/963871.html

Led by Joe Root, who after 38 Tests is looking like the most complete England batsman

to emerge since the war