England’s Alastair Cook is the most prolific left-handed batsman in Test cricket, scoring 12,472 runs in 161 matches since March 2006. England’s most-capped Test player, who captained his country 59 times, moved ahead of Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara (12,400 runs in 134 matches between 2000 and 2015) during his final Test innings, compiling 147 - his 33rd Test hundred - against India at The Oval, UK, on 9-10 September 2018.

Cook leads an illustrious list of left-handed Test batsmen, among them Brian Lara (West Indies; 11,953 runs), Shivnarine Chanderpaul (West Indies; 11,867), Allan Border (Australia; 11,174) and Graeme Smith (South Africa; 9,265). Other left-handers who have amassed at least 7,000 Test runs include Matthew Hayden (Australia), David Gower (England), Garry Sobers, Clive Lloyd and Chris Gayle (all West Indies), Sourav Ganguly (India), Stephen Fleming (New Zealand) and Andrew Strauss (England).

Cook moved into fifth place in the list of top Test run-scorers during his final Test innings, at The Oval on 9-10 September 2018, and took another record from Sangakkara shortly afterwards when he reached his 15th second-innings hundred to round off a spectacular international career with an innings of 147.

No opening batsman has scored more Test runs than Alastair Cook (11,845). Cook didn’t bat at No.1 or No.2 in just seven of his 161 Test matches.

Cook is one of only a handful of players to score fifties in both innings of his first and last Test match: 60 and 104 not out against India in Nagpur in March 2006 and 71 and 147 against the same opposition at The Oval in September 2018