The career of Alastair Cook has had a rare quality of being able to bend time, or at least perceptions of it. Some days, it feels as if Cook has been around forever.
That will be the feeling when he plays his 100th Test in Perth on Friday.
As a landmark, one hundred Tests no longer carries the heft it once did, but it is still an accurate gauge of longevity.
On other days, it feels like only yesterday that Cook was getting off the plane from the Caribbean that deposited him in Nagpur, where on debut, he hit 60 and an unbeaten 104.
In cricket years, March 2006 does not always feel that long ago.
It is probably this disorientating quality that sometimes means it takes longer for the scale of his achievements to sink in, especially to those outside England.
The achievements are vast, which is not in doubt. He is still two weeks from turning 29, which for a batsman is not so old. He may still have his most productive years ahead of him.
Yet the weight of his numbers – 99 Tests, nearly 8,000 Test runs, 25 hundreds – makes it sound like they should be the work of some wrinkly, grizzled 39 year old who has been around for 15 years and is about to retire.
Imagine how big the numbers might look if he plays another seven or eight years.
At the moment, though, Cook looks as though he has been around too long. England are on the receiving end of what could become, by today, a fearful hiding from Australia.
Cook has not scored runs, England’s batting has been abysmal and the word, true or not, is that they are spooked by Mitchell Johnson’s pace.
In his defence, Cook has not looked out of form exactly.
His dismissal on Sunday, hooking Johnson, might have been the work of a frazzled mind.
It could just as well have been simply poor execution. As an opener, in any case, crease life is a fraught experience and about as fragile as cricketing existence gets. An opener can be in the form of his life, yet still get out early to the conspiring of a hard, swinging new ball, fresh fast bowlers and a lively surface.
When Cook is out of form, be assured it will be crystal clear, because his game can be obvious that way. His head leans over too much when he tries playing through leg; his footwork can get a little iffy and he begins dabbing outside off.
Back in 2010, he was really out of form. In that summer series against Pakistan, he looked terrible and was close to being dropped by the time the third Test at the Oval began.
Three times, early in his second innings, he edged at catchable heights between slips – twice in two balls.
Yet he ended up making 110, an innings fluent enough for it to be his third-fastest innings over a hundred.
How different could his career have looked now had any of those been taken and not gone for a boundary?
Conceivably it could have come to a halt, at least a temporary one, had any of those been taken. Instead, those three balls fetched three boundaries and eventually the hundred.
There is, if you look carefully, a strong flux about Cook’s career. He has had phases of huge bounty, but also some very fallow periods.
Twelve times in his career, he has averaged over 50 in a series, but he has also averaged under 40 as many as 13 times.
That has lately started to reappear within series themselves, where one big score has often camouflaged a series of lower scores. Against India in 2011, for instance, there was a mammoth 294, but five other innings which yielded just 54 runs; a 115 against South Africa in 2012, but just 80 runs in five more innings; 130 against New Zealand earlier this summer, but 87 runs in three other knocks.
It is a bewildering scatter for a man acknowledged – and shown by his overall records – to be such a wolfish run-getter, a curiously intemperate record for such an ostensibly even-tempered man. If it bears repeating that it is partly just the nature of his role as opener, it is equally worth asking where the rest of the explanation lies.
Whatever the equation, the particulars can wait for now. Of far greater urgency for Cook, and England, are his runs, preferably in the quantities he scored last time he was in Australia.
The runs of a batsman-captain form a substantial chunk of what we consider good captaincy.
Cook has shown many times that he is capable of delivering that. Only last winter, he was doing so in India.
He will do it again, too. The problem is identifying when.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
How has net migration to UK changed?
The figure was broadly flat immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic, standing at 216,000 in the year to June 2018 and 224,000 in the year to June 2019.
It then dropped to an estimated 111,000 in the year to June 2020 when restrictions introduced during the pandemic limited travel and movement.
The total rose to 254,000 in the year to June 2021, followed by steep jumps to 634,000 in the year to June 2022 and 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
The latest available figure of 728,000 for the 12 months to June 2024 suggests levels are starting to decrease.
Recent winners
2002 Giselle Khoury (Colombia)
2004 Nathalie Nasralla (France)
2005 Catherine Abboud (Oceania)
2007 Grace Bijjani (Mexico)
2008 Carina El-Keddissi (Brazil)
2009 Sara Mansour (Brazil)
2010 Daniella Rahme (Australia)
2011 Maria Farah (Canada)
2012 Cynthia Moukarzel (Kuwait)
2013 Layla Yarak (Australia)
2014 Lia Saad (UAE)
2015 Cynthia Farah (Australia)
2016 Yosmely Massaad (Venezuela)
2017 Dima Safi (Ivory Coast)
2018 Rachel Younan (Australia)
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Hydrogen: Market potential
Hydrogen has an estimated $11 trillion market potential, according to Bank of America Securities and is expected to generate $2.5tn in direct revenues and $11tn of indirect infrastructure by 2050 as its production increases six-fold.
"We believe we are reaching the point of harnessing the element that comprises 90 per cent of the universe, effectively and economically,” the bank said in a recent report.
Falling costs of renewable energy and electrolysers used in green hydrogen production is one of the main catalysts for the increasingly bullish sentiment over the element.
The cost of electrolysers used in green hydrogen production has halved over the last five years and will fall to 60 to 90 per cent by the end of the decade, acceding to Haim Israel, equity strategist at Merrill Lynch. A global focus on decarbonisation and sustainability is also a big driver in its development.
EA Sports FC 26
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3/5
PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
