Days Like This Show What A Tough Cookie He Really Is!

Peter Hayter says he is not surprised that Alastair Cook found the inner strength to prove his doubters wrong

Only the hardest of hard-hearts would have found reasons to begrudge Alastair Cook the joy he must have felt in the moments of his great triumph at the Melbourne Cricket Ground this week and they know who they are.

The England opener had been through the same celebration 31 times in 150 matches prior to reaching three figures on day two of the fourth Test of these Ashes and had given us double bubble on four other occasions before reaching his 200 on day three.

The routine has never changed since he scored his first England hundred on debut against India in Nagpur more than a decade ago: arms raised, helmet removed, dark eyes pointed skyward and his right gloved hand cupped to his ear in a gesture whose meaning he has kept guarded all those times over all those years.

But never can it all have meant quite so much to Cook, his teammates and his supporters, nor filled them with as much quiet satisfaction as it did when he upped those numbers to 32 and five.

With the memories of what happened on his last tour down under still stuck somewhere deep within his soul and the criticism of his part in the sacking of Kevin Pietersen so often employed since then as a stick with which to beat him, if exorcising those demons was as significant to him as some believed it might be, this was the innings he has been waiting four years to play.

But it would have meant so much more to him than any sense of personal validation, because by doing it not only did he prove he can still play at this level, but also because it showed he could carry on doing it for years.

Sunil Gavaskar once said that scoring 15,000 Test runs and making 50 centuries was not beyond Cook.