Most consecutive Test matches played

Alastair Cook (UK) played 159 consecutive Test matches for England between 11 May 2006 and 7 September 2018. In total, Cook turned out 161 times for England, missing only one match, the third Test of his debut series against India in Mumbai in March 2006, due to an upset stomach.

Cook went past Allan Border’s (Australia) record of 153 consecutive Tests when he played in his 154th match, against Pakistan at Headingley, UK, on 1-3 June 2018.

The sequence of 159 Tests included 32 hundreds, among them his top score of 294, against India at Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK, in August 2011.

In his final match before international retirement, against India at The Oval, UK, on 7-11 September, England’s most-capped Test cricketer (161 matches since 1 March 2006) became the fifth-highest run-scorer in Tests and, simultaneously, the highest-scoring left-hander in the 2,318-match history of Test cricket, scoring 71 and 147 to take his total to 12,472 runs. He took both records from Kumar Sangakkara, who hit 12,400 runs (in 134 Tests) for Sri Lanka between July 2000 and August 2015.