It was the sound of Alastair Cook leaving the crease at the Kia Oval that you really noticed. There were three parts to it. First was the weird, involuntary groan as Jasprit Bumrah rushed a ball through Cook’s defences to splay the stumps. It was 4.22pm. Cook had nudged and cuffed and occasionally flashed his way to an autumnal half century on one of those sunny, steady opener’s days where the game is still crisp and starchily in order, there to be tickled into shape, and where, briefly, anything seems possible.
Bumrah has been the best of India’s fast bowlers. He is also a fast bowler who does not resemble a fast bowler at any stage in his run up and action, right up until the moment he suddenly becomes one to startling effect. Bumrah starts by walking 10 paces. Then he skips, grudgingly, for six more. Finally he leaps, star-jumps, points a finger to the sky and whirls that straight arm down like a man lashing a bullwhip.
Perhaps Cook did not pick the length this time. Perhaps it kept low. Either way the ball beat a late, endearingly ugly adjustment and Cook was gone for 71, his 57th Test half century and an obligingly gnarled, crabby innings; almost a tribute in itself to the very idea, the basic principles of Cook-ishness.
Bumrah celebrated, then stopped and watched Cook go, a nicely spontaneous moment of fraternal respect. At which point the second noise came, as the crowd around this low-rise bowl stood and applauded Cook all the way from the middle, not so much an ovation as a shared public embrace.
There was a kind of beauty to that walk off. The Oval is a good place for goodbyes, a ground that is always at its best in the dry, bleached-out days of early autumn, when the air is full of endings and last things. Ever since Cook announced that this would be his final Test it has been hard to find anyone without a Cook anecdote, a Cook take, a memory of the first time they saw this skinny kid and thought … well, what exactly?
The best, and most honest, of all these was probably Nasser Hussain, whose first meeting with Cook involved Hussain basically ignoring him; and whose second meeting with Cook also involved Hussain basically ignoring him. This seems very Cook. The applause as he walked off was greeted with a wave of the bat all the more genuine for its slightly shrugging nature, that familiar walk, the dip of the head as he approached the gate, shadows already stretching across the lime-green late summer grass, the pavilion and Bedser stand on its feet.
In that moment the realisation that there really is no more Cook after this felt a little cruel, as though some essential part of the English summer is leaving with him – as though the decision has been taken to abolish tea, or the British Museum, or rainy Sunday afternoons or saying sorry to people when they have just stood on your toe.
There are very few things as reassuringly English as this, Cook on a nibbly, breezy day that could go either way, the long-form drama of leave and edge and nurdle, as English as muggy weather and shiny bedspreads and weekend rail replacement services.
For now we had those fond four and half hours on a day when until that moment after tea England had looked to be blunting some fine, concerted efforts from India’s seam attack.
There was a slightly bashful guard of honour at the start of the morning session. And with a rush Cook was ready to face the 26,087th ball of his Test career. Playing to the gallery he left it, of course.
Disappointingly for those looking for some doughty-old-Cook colour his first scoring stroke was a push through cover rather than something more classically grizzled, a nurdle through square leg or an inside edge off a foot. There was a crushing cut for four off Bumrah, one of those shots where Cook stands up and thrashes aristocratically through point like a crotchety earl swatting midges with his shooting stick. And so Cook ground on, setting himself to last out the day like a Soviet-era combine harvester chugging its way across the horizon.
Keaton Jennings departed with the score on 60. This was a shame as in Jennings, Cook has finally found a partner who manages the amazingfeat of making him look by comparison lithe and elegant and fluent.
Approaching his 50 Cook leaped back as Ravi Jadeja dropped short and spank-cut the ball to the fence, the same shot that got his Test career moving back in Nagpur in 2006. The ovation for his half century in the next over had a hunger about it, a crowd willing the game one way as Cook pushed his 139th ball down the ground to rack up the first half-century by any opener in this five-Test series.
And finally it was time for him to depart, although perhaps not for the final time. The ovation as Cook walked off seemed to have an extra depth of feeling. Will anyone ever have a career like this again?
Will there be Test batsmen prepared or even given the chance to play so many games for so many years, and to such an acquisitive, oddly comforting rhythm. The third and final sound as Cook walked up the steps was unexpected, a sudden shouted cheer around the ground. He did not look back.
