Of the 3,118 male players who have played Test cricket, Cheteshwar Pujara is only the 75th to have completed a century of Tests. In joining a centurions’ club that only 2.4% of players have entry to, he has followed in the footsteps of the commonest profile of this rarefied group: a top-order batsman playing in the 21st century. He also represents a country that has delivered more centurions than any other Test-playing nation relative to the number of matches played by them.
India, a leader
Pujara is the 14th Indian to complete 100 Tests. That is the same as the number of Australians who have accomplished this landmark. Only England, with 15 players, have had more. But England and Australia have also played a lot more Test cricket than India. It’s only this century that India matched (many a year even led) all countries in the number of Tests played. In total, India have played 913 Tests – the fourth most after England (1,763 Tests), Australia (1,485), and the West Indies (958).
Adjusted for the number of Tests played, and thus the opportunities available to a player, India lead all countries in the playing run that its centurions had. In the number of Tests played by them, India’s 14 centurions account for 17% of Test caps available to Indian players. That figure is 10% for England, and 11% for Australia. Only the Sri Lankan players with 100 Tests can match India – a testament to how core these players were for the two Test sides.
[Chart 1]
21st century centurions
Colin Cowdrey was the first cricketer to touch 100 Tests, and he played from 1954 to 1975. Sunil Gavaskar was the first Indian to hit the landmark, and he signed off from Test cricket in 1987, having started his Test career in 1971. In the 20th century, Dilip Vengsarkar and Kapil Dev were the only other Indians to follow suit. The 21st century saw the number of centurions surge, especially from India, as Test cricket became more lucrative and organised, and India as a Test-playing nation moved from the periphery to the centre stage.
As many as 57 of the 75 centurions finished their Test careers, or remain active players, after 2000. The last decade, from 2010 to 2019, saw more centurions finish playing Test cricket than any other decade. This was the generation that bred longevity and amassed records, with Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, and Muttiah Muralitharan leading the way.
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Records and contexts
The most common path to longevity in Test cricket has flowed through top-order batting. Of the 75 centurions, 52 have been top-order batters. They are followed by pace bowlers (nine) and spinners (six). Further, there have been four all-rounders and four wicket-keepers to cross this milestone. The Indian set of 14 has 10 batters.
The career average of the 52 top-order batters ranges from a middling 36 runs per innings (Carl Hooper of the West Indies) to a supreme 57 runs per innings (Kumar Sangakkara, Sri Lanka). This list contains some of the defining batters in the history of Test cricket. It also has some batters who were a rung or two below – 21 centurion batters averaged below 45, but acquired relevance due to the contexts in which they played. Pujara, for example, is an old-fashioned number three stepping into the big shoes of Dravid and surrounded by fluent batters. Similarly, England had a clutch of openers in Michael Atherton (average 38), Andrew Strauss (41) ,and Graham Gooch (43) who got a long run.
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Batting for longevity
Just how skewed this list is towards batters is evident from the fact that it took until the late 1990s for the first bowler to hit the 100-Test mark, in the form of Courtney Walsh and Wasim Akram. By then, 18 batters and two all-rounders (Ian Botham and Kapil Dev) had crossed that mark. Generally, batters have led the way in career longevity, underscoring their comparatively less-strenuous workloads, and a larger natural window to maintain their skills at the highest level compared to bowlers.
This is also evidenced by the fact that of the 11 players whose Test careers spanned 18 years or more, seven are batsmen. Leading them are Sachin Tendulkar (24 years) and Shiv Chanderpaul (21 years). Pujara has compiled a solid career over 13 years. In another part of the world, a pace bowler called James Anderson is currently playing in his 20th year and his 178th Test match.
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