Blubbing Over Cook, Weeping Over The Hundred

The mainstream cricket awards season has come to an end with last nights PCA dinner bringing the official proceedings to a close but nosummer would be complete without my gongs so here goes. The envelopes, please.

- Peter Hayter

The Kleenex award for outstanding contribution to Lachrymosity. (Is that a word? It is now).

Winners – Alastair Cook and James Anderson.

For one great of the game to bring grown men to tears is one thing, but what happened during and after England’s final Test against India at the Oval was unprecedented, the mother of all blubfests.

When Jasprit Bumrah launched the utterly pointless throw that gifted Cook the runs he needed to complete his 33rd Test century in his final innings, there was not a dry eye in the house and even after the tears of laughter had evaporated, there were still some left with which to acknowledge the Essex man’s incredible contribution to England cricket.

Some might also have been weeping for the fact that, of Cook’s 161 Test matches, spanning 26,561 balls over 291 innings and producing 12,472 runs and 33 tons, not a single second of his record-breaking 12-year career had been viewed live on free-to-air television in this country.

No doubt those observers would have suffered similar emotions when Anderson bowled Mohammed Shami with the last ball of the match for the wicket that took him past Glenn McGrath to become the highest wicket taker, among pace bowlers, in Test history.

For the record, 528 of his 564 scalps had gone similarly unseen.

Anderson’s emotional response at the end of the match, and Cook’s earlier, were truly moving.

Note to those who sold England cricket to satellite TV in 2005: anyone remember what Gazza’s tears did for the other game?

The Coventry City Award for blue sky thinking.