Cook announced his retirement from professional cricket today (October 13), having played his final match for Essex in the 2023 County Championship.

Alastair Cook: 147 (286 balls, 14x4s), 5th Test, day four, England v India, the Oval, September 10

He may not have the tats, the flair, or the roguish, anti-Establishment attitude, but this was your definitive sporting hero seeking a finale that befitted the career and the occasion. A humble, amenable protagonist seeking completion, an innings that saluted the power of storytelling and the methodical construction of meaning.

England started the day with a 154-run lead and the series already seized, so the day was to be declared Cook’s Day – a hero bidding to morph from outstanding servant to undisputed legend. All that was lacking from a record-breaking career was a fairy-tale finish, with the opportunity of becoming only the fifth person to start and finish his career with a Test century. A nation was willing him on, as #ThankYouChef filled social timelines.

The sun was shining on what looked like a decent day for batting, and Cook presented the best version of himself – not crabbed, not meandering at one run an over, not overly reliant on that dab to leg. Joining him at the crease was the man who had replaced him as captain and batting lynchpin, Joe Root: a little meaner, a little wiser than the pup who made his Test bow under his partner’s leadership in 2012 against the same opponents in Nagpur.

Cook became the fifth man – and only Englishman – to hit a hundred during his first and final Test match, joining Reggie Duff, Bill Ponsford, Greg Chappell and Mohammad Azharuddin. Like all powerful storytelling, you need an epic resolution, which links back to the beginning of the story after the ebbs and flows of the middle order. In devouring it, you conclude that this was the only possible ending – everything was building up to this moment. Nothing else would have been just. “I feel quite calm and as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Cook soon told the BBC. That day, Cook became complete, and we all became more complete for witnessing it.

No.5 on our list of Test innings of the year