Cooking The Record Books

Who is the greatest batsman currently playing test cricket?

The official ICC rankings say Kumar Sangakkara*. However, most fans would probably vote for Sachin Tendulka - the Indian star, who has scored more runs than anyone else in test history: more than 15,000!

However, I'm going to propose an alternative candidate: England vice-captain Alistair Cook.

But, why? Cook has scored less than 6,000 runs, and stands only 3rd on the ICC rankings!

Yes... true... but...

The ICC rankings tell only the sort-term story, so we can discount them!

The all-time run-scoring table is where it matters, upon which Sachin stands atop, but his career is drawing to a close, and he is likely to retire soon, with around 16,000 runs to his name.

Cook on the other hand is still only 26, and currently scoring at at a rate of about 1000 runs/ year.

So let's do some extrapolation!

(If only because it keeps this post vaguely on-topic in terms of data warehousing!)

If Cook retires at 38 - the same age that Sachin is now - we can expect him to have accumulated a massive 18,000 runs!

And that would be one mightily COOKED re-write of the record books!

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* At time of writing!