A very English 10,000 ends an agonising wait

It's not before time. For an English cricket observer, it's hard to remember a more agonising wait for an approaching milestone. Anderson's 400th wicket surely wasn't this bad. Perhaps Ramprakash's 100th first-class century, back in 2008.

We can argue all day about the significance of the milestone. How much more valuable are 10,000 Test runs than 9,980? But a milestone it is, and an important one, for it finally gives England the undisputed aggregate leviathan needed for its fans to hold their heads up in international company. For nearly 20 years we've had to make excuses for our players' absences while the big beasts of overseas piled on the runs in an era when it was apparently easier to score buckets of runs than ever before.

It was not always this way. Until the early '80s, England had been one of the world's leading exporters of record-breaking batsmen. Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond and Colin Cowdrey formed a succession of record career run-scorers that went unbroken even by Bradman for 30 years. England provided Andy Sandham, Test cricket's first triple-centurion, and, before Sobers' 365 in 1957, the Test high score had been in the hands of an England player for 52 of the previous 54 years. Nor do England players of that vintage disgrace themselves in the averages column.

Despite this rich history, in casual conversations about greatest ever batsmen, England players rarely feature. Part of this is doubtless because most of England's best batsmen played before matches were regularly televised, and so most contemporary fans haven't seen them in action. With the notable exception of Bradman, average, too, is often considered secondary to aggregate in such discussions, as it requires more work to assess comparatively. What is the minimum cut-off number of matches or innings? Are results against certain teams or in certain conditions to be excluded? Names like Ken Barrington and Herbert Sutcliffe have long since disappeared into the mists that shroud our collective consciousness, supplanted by fresher and flashier memories of Laras and Pontings.

The last of the dynasty was arguably Geoffrey Boycott, who was the final England batsman to hold the aggregate run record. Later England batsmen would exceed Boycott's run total, but the 10,000 run club established by Gavaskar remained closed to England players thereafter. Meanwhile multiple players from India, Australia, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, and one from South Africa, earned admittance from 1990 onwards. England batsmen came to occupy a sort of second tier in the aggregate stakes, despite England playing more matches, and having more money at its disposal, than almost anyone else.

The reasons for this are doubtless tied up in the collapse of English cricket from the late 1980s onwards. Politics, an unhelpful supporting system, a revolving-door selection policy, and simple bad luck, conspired to prevent many promising England players ever having the careers it had once looked like they might. Had Michael Atherton's back not betrayed him, might he have made 10,000 runs? David Gower, perhaps, had he not been thrown overboard in 1992? The names of Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick are intoned in such a way as to strike fear in the hearts of promising young cricketers. But, while England were hardly the only team to face these issues, they were the only major team to make such a hash of it.

Even after Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher famously stopped the rot at the end of the 1990s, the names of batsmen who impressed early in their careers but, for whatever reason, could not establish themselves firmly towards the top of the world table litter the history of England's progress: Marcus Trescothick; Michael Vaughan; Andrew Strauss. There is still time for Ian Bell to join Cook on 10,000 runs, although it looks like he might have been jettisoned too soon to make a realistic assault on the summit.

Some might mutter darkly about the curtailed career of Kevin Pietersen, but he was in some ways lucky to return to the team in 2012 and, with the exception of one massive innings, has not particularly distinguished himself in first-class cricket in recent years. In any case, he is in good company on the tally of might-have-beens. One might equally speculate about the lost years of Boycott in the 1970s. Whatever the reasons, they didn't get the runs.

One often overlooked factor is that England players are often older by the time they start their careers. Among the 10,000-club players, the oldest on debut was Border, at 23, and only he, Dravid and Sangakkara had celebrated their 22nd birthday before making their first appearance. Cook, starting at 21, therefore had an inbuilt advantage.

So luck played its part. But so did sheer bloody-minded determination. Cook stands as an anachronism of sorts, one of the last old-school Test batsmen, a grinder in an age of blast and bash. What team could such a player turn out for but England? It's fitting that, when England cricket finally produces a statistical icon, it's a player so utterly typical of their batting style in recent years. In some ways, that makes the achievement all the sweeter.

Will others reach 10,000 runs? Perhaps, but, as they say, it's runs on the board that count. Congratulations, Captain Cook. May these be the first ten thousand of many.