Stephen James Cook is a former South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er who played in three Tests

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 and four ODIs from 1991 to 1993. His son Stephen Cook

Stephen Cook (cricketer)

Stephen Craig Cook is a South African first class cricketer, the son of former Test player Jimmy Cook. He is a right-handed opening batsman and very occasional right-arm medium bowler formerly for Gauteng following his debut in 2000, and for Lions since 2009...

 currently plays for Gauteng

Transvaal cricket team

Gauteng cricket team is the first-class cricket team of the province of Gauteng in South Africa....

.

Cook was a prolific opening batsman both in his native South Africa and for Somerset County Cricket Club

Somerset County Cricket Club

Somerset County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Somerset...

 but South Africa's exclusion from Test cricket

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 cost him a significant Test career. He played in all 19 of South Africa's 'unofficial Test matches' against rebel sides. Aged over 40, and having waited two decades for an official Test cap, he edged Kapil Dev

Kapil Dev

Kapil Dev Ramlal Nikhanj , better known as Kapil Dev, is a former Indian cricketer. He captained the Indian cricket team which won the 1983 Cricket World Cup...

's opening ball, a late outswinger, to third slip in the First Test between South Africa and India at Durban in November 1992, to become the first debutant to be dismissed by the first ball of a Test match; Leon Garrick

Leon Garrick

Leon Vivian Garrick is a Jamaican cricketer. He played only one Test and three One Day Internationals for West Indies in 2001. Prior to playing Test cricket he played for Jamaica senior and youth teams, most notably in the domestic competition in 1997 he made successive centuries that helped to...

 of the West Indies also suffered this fate nine years later.

Originally a middle-order batsman for Transvaal

Transvaal Province

Transvaal Province was a province of the Union of South Africa from 1910 to 1961, and of its successor, the Republic of South Africa, from 1961 until the end of apartheid in 1994 when a new constitution subdivided it.-History:...

, his career blossomed when he converted to the opening position.