Cook at ease and ready to complete circle

Turn back a year, to the two-Test series against New Zealand, with low expectations of a team rising from the fiasco that was the World Cup, and few would have foreseen the bright summer that captured the public’s imagination and reinvigorated a young and exciting England side.

Turn back another, and the knives were sharpening for whoever was left standing after an Ashes pasting that left the team in tatters and ended several careers.

It seems astonishing, therefore, that England are just two series wins away from holding all nine bilateral Test series trophies. If they succeed against Sri Lanka and Pakistan this summer they will complete a set that few would have contemplated possible two years ago.

“I think it would be a great achievement,” Alastair Cook, England’s captain, said. “People have spoken about it over the last couple of weeks and I don’t think there’s any harm in that if it inspires us to do it. But actually achieving that will be hard work. We know that and it’s not going to be given to us against two good sides.”

In a testament to his durability, Cook has weathered the turmoil, led each new round of new eras and now stands on the cusp of becoming the first English player to reach 10,000 Test runs.

That he will reach the milestone as England captain is, he acknowledges, down to his stubbornness and determination never to quit. It will be fitting, too, if he passes the mark against Sri Lanka at Headingley; it was during England’s loss in the corresponding Test two years ago – as Angelo Matthews and Rangana Herath frustrated England’s bowlers with a match-winning partnership – that Cook reached his nadir as captain and was on the verge of quitting, in his own words “close enough that you wouldn’t want …

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