Gloucester-born former England captain Alastair Cook retires from all forms of cricket

Gloucester-born, Alastair Cook has officially announced his full retirement from cricket, after a 20-year career. 

Cook retired from international cricket in 2018 but decided to carry on playing for his county, Essex and announced that he won’t be looking to extend his contract which expired this summer. 

In a statement on the Essex cricket website, Cook said: “It is not easy to say goodbye. For more than two decades, cricket has been so much more than my job.”

Cook was captain of England from August 2012, until the spring of 2016, he led his England side to 24 wins from 59 tests which makes him one of England’s most successful captains.

In 2011, Cook captained England to their first test win in India since 1984-85, and it was against India that he made his emotional farewell to English cricket.

Cook’s England career was hugely successful, as the opening batsman scored 12,472 runs during his international career, as well as notching the most test centuries, with 33. 

Cook often found himself in the slips when England were fielding and he is second on the list of all-time test catches from an England fielder with 175, only recently being overtaken by his captaincy heir, Joe Root, who is on 183.

During his England captaincy, Cook led England to back-to-back home Ashes series wins in 2013 and 2015 as well as captaining 59 test matches which was once a record, that has since been broken by Joe Root. 

Cook was knighted in 2019 for services to cricket and at the time, he was England’s first cricketer to be given a knighthood since Sir Ian Botham in 2007.

Since retiring from England duty in 2018, Cook has scored 3,889 runs which is a number only bettered by Durham’s Alex Lees in the same timeframe. 

In the 2023 season, he led Essex to a second-placed finish in County Championship Division One only behind, the ever-strengthening Surrey.

Cook’s Gloucestershire links go back to Cam and Dursley where both his father, Graham, and grandfather, Clifford, played cricket. 

Speaking in his autobiography, Cook said: “I seemed to be in a bit of a rush to get going when I made my first appearance, on Christmas Day 1984. 

“Mum and Dad were planning to spend the festive period with both sets of parents, first in Gloucestershire and then in Glamorgan. 

UOGJMAG LIVE BLOG: Catchup with all the days sports news here!

“However, I arrived two months early. So my status as a native of Gloucestershire was a bit of an accident.”