New Delhi: England captain Alastair Cook is playing his 100th Test match in Perth with his rival Australian captain Michael Clarke who too is appearing in his 100th test. Cook has a tough job at his hand as his team is losing grip on the Urn after facing defeats in the first two Ashes tests. With 7,883 Test runs already to his name, India TV looks back at Cook as a child who was destined to lead England one day.Born in Gloucester, Alastair Cook is one of several players of mixed Anglo-Welsh heritage to play for England.. Cook is a keen musician. By the age of eight, he was learning the clarinet, and joined St Paul's Cathedral School in London.During his summer holidays, he would play cricket for Maldon Cricket Club, and by the age of 11 he was already playing for their adult side on the Third XI. While being educated in Bedford, he also learned to play piano and saxophone. However, music was soon eclipsed when the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) came to play against the Bedford XI. The visiting side were a man short and drafted the 14-year-old new boy to play against his school, Cook scored a century.Over the next four years, he hit 17 centuries and two double-hundreds, to total 4,396 runs at an average of 87.90, captaining the cricket team in his final year. In his final year at Bedford, in 2003, he scored 1,287 runs for the school, including two unbeaten double-hundreds, averaging 160.87 to take the school record. After his international success, Cook returned for an Old Boys match at Bedford in 2008, playing for the HM Ultimate XI.Cook had his first taste of international cricket playing the U15 World Cup in 2000. Three years later Cook was called up to the Under 19 England team for their tour of South Africa. Cook was appointed captain of the team the following year, 2004. His first call of duty was the U19 World Cup in the West Indies where he guided England through the group stages and on past the Super League stage, including an unbeaten century. He went on from there to captain them in a U19 Test win over Bangladesh before taking the One-Day series too. Cook was included in the ECB National Academy in the winter of 2005–06. The Academy's tour of the West Indies was cut short on 24 February for Cook who only appeared in the first innings, scoring only 6, before being called up, alongside James Anderson and Owais Shah, to the England team's tour of India to replace captain Michael Vaughan who was suffering from a knee injury and opener Marcus Trescothick who was suffering from stress. Unlike Shah and Anderson, Cook was welcomed straight into the England XI and made his Test debut aged 21, days after he had flown in from the West Indies. He made an instant impact, opening with Andrew Strauss and scoring a half century in the first innings
