Alastair Cook becomes youngest man to play in 150 Test matches

Alastair Cook could beat Sachin Tendulkar’s tally of Test runs but he’s definitely trumped the Little Master in another way, as our stats man Benedict Bermange explains...

Alastair Cook has became the youngest man to reach the landmark of 150 Tests - doing so at the age of 32 years and 354 days to beat Sachin Tendulkar, who did so at 35 years and 106 days.

Cook also took the shortest time:

Alastair Cook (11 years, 288 days)
Rahul Dravid (14 years, 200 days)
Allan Border (14 years, 243 days)
Ricky Ponting (14 years, 365 days)
Jacques Kallis (16 years, 23 days)

Cook has made 130 runs in his last nine innings with no fifties. That is his second-worst nine-innings sequence in Tests. He made 129 runs in nine innings in 2014 - the only other time he has batted nine innings without a fifty. He has never gone 10 innings without a half-century.

Thursday's play marked just the third occasion since 1900 when England have scored at least 300 runs on the opening day of a Test in Australia:

328/5 in Sydney in 1966
312/5 in Melbourne in 1966
305/4 in Perth in 2017

Dawid Malan scored England's 11th century at the WACA - five of those 11 have now been maiden Test centuries, with Malan joining Brian Luckhurst, Chris Broad, Jack Richards and Ben Stokes.

In contrast, only four Australians have scored their maiden Test centuries at the ground - Greg Chappell, Tony Mann, Wayne Phillips and Brad Hodge.

The third session batted out by Malan and Jonny Bairstow is the first time England have not lost a wicket in a session in a Test in Australia since the post-lunch session on day three in Sydney in 2010/11 (Cook and Ian Bell).

Malan and Bairstow's unbroken partnership of 174 is England's highest fifth-wicket partnership at the WACA - the previous best was Graham Thorpe and Mark Ramprakash's stand of 158 in 1995.

The crowd was 22,148 which is the second-largest first-day crowd at a WACA Test, after 24,268 in 2006/07.