Alastair Nathan Cook was born on Christmas Day, 1984 in Gloucester. He is a left-handed batsman for Essex and England, and the current one-day England captain. His nicknames are Cooky and Chef.
His highest test score is 294, which he made at Edgbaston against India on August 10, 2011.
On the Ashes tour of 2010-11, he scored an incredible 766 runs in seven innings to anchor England's first series win in Australia for 24 years. In so doing, he went past 5,000 Test runs, the second youngest batsman to reach the landmark after Sachin Tendulkar.
Cook made his debut on March 1 in India, scoring 60 and 104 not out. He went on to become the youngest Englishman to reach 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 and 5,000 Test runs. He is the only Englishman to score seven Test centuries before his 23rd birthday.
He joined the Essex Academy age 15, and made his first-class debut for Essex coming straight out of school at the end of the 2003 season against Nottinghamshire.
In 2005 Cook won the NBC Denis Compton Award, the CWC Young Cricketer of the Year award and the PCA Young Cricketer of the Year.
He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours.
Off the pitch he is a keen musician. By the age of eight he was learning the clarinet and joined St Paul's Cathedral Choir School as a chorister where he boarded under a rigorous schedule of rehearsals, whilst also learning the clarinet. He also contributed saxophone to Freefonix, a CBBC animated series with music-based adventures.
