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Cricket is currently off the radar in Australia, with football’s World Cup in Brazil, French Open tennis, State of Origin thrillers, NRL, AFL and rugby Tests grabbing sports headlines in print and online.
If the Test cricket tussle between two mediocre cricket teams, West Indies and New Zealand, hasn’t got your attention yet, let me arouse your interest.
A milestone was reached in the Kingston Test which started on Sunday. The West Indian run-smashing machine Chris Gayle became the 59th cricketer and ninth West Indian to play 100 Tests.
England’s classy batsman Colin Cowdrey was the first to make 100 Test appearances, bringing up the historic figure against Australia at Birmingham in 1968. Cowdrey celebrated the occasion by scoring a century.
Others to hit centuries in their 100th Test are Javed Miandad and Inzamam-ul-Haq for Pakistan, West Indian Gordon Greenidge, England’s Alec Stewart, Australia’s Ricky Ponting and South Africa’s Graeme Smith.
Ponting is the only one to score centuries in both innings in his 100th Test, notching 120 and 143 not out against South Africa in Sydney in 2006. Inzamam made the highest score when playing his hundredth Test, 184 against India at Bangalore in 2005.
Australia’s legendary Shane Warne became the first spinner in the elite 100 Test Club.
He had a sensational hundredth Test as he captured 2-70 and 6-161, plus scored 63 and an unbeaten 15 against South Africa at Cape Town in 2002. “There are few fairy tales, this is as close as it gets,” he declared after Australia won the thriller by four wickets.
Since then only two bowlers – both spinners – have taken five wickets in an innings in their 100th Test appearances. They are India’s Anil Kumble (2-87 and 5-89 against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad in 2005) and Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan (3-87 and 6-54 against Bangladesh in the 2006 Chittagong Test).
Among successful 100-Test players, India’s all-rounder Kapil Dev made 55 and took 4-69 and 3-82 in his 100th Test against Pakistan in Karachi in 1989-90. Sourav Ganguly’s 100th Test coincided with Melbourne’s 100th Test in 2007.
Fittingly for the Centurion Test between South Africa and New Zealand in April 2006, three cricketers played their 100th Tests simultaneously: Jacques Kallis and Shaun Pollock from South Africa, and kiwi Stephen Fleming, who became the first from his country to hit three figures.
All three performed poorly in their landmark Tests, but none performed as poorly as Australia’s Allan Border. The first Australian to play 100 Tests, he was bowled for a duck by West Indian Curtly Ambrose at the MCG in December 1988.
The next day’s headlines made interesting reading: “Border’s day is Curtly curtailed” and “Duck of the century”.
India’s Sachin Tendulkar is the only cricketer to play 200 Tests. He is followed by two Australians Steve Waugh and Ponting with 168 each.
So how will Chris Gayle fair in his 100th Test, played in his home town of Kingston, Jamaica? Will he do a Ponting or a Border? And is playing 100 Tests a big deal anymore?
Cowdrey achieved this milestone 91 years after the inaugural Test in 1877. In the 46 years since , 58 have made 100 Test appearances because of the mushrooming of Test cricket since 1970s.
But with ODIs and T20 matches reducing the number of Test matches, will the landmark of playing 100 Tests regain its rarity?
Mark Waugh holds the record of reaching his 100th Test in the quickest time – 8 years and 342 days. Gayle has taken almost 15 years to reach this landmark.
Gayle is within sight of another landmark, being just 67 runs short of becoming the eighth West Indian to reach 7000 Test runs. He said that he was raring to go on the “perfect occasion” in his hometown.
Gayle rated his majestic 333 against Sri Lanka at Galle in 2010-11 as his best Test innings due to the struggles he had endured against the team in the past.
“That innings stands out in my mind and I put it at No. 1”, he told Cricinfo. “Over the years, playing against Sri Lanka, I did not get a lot of runs. I had a terrible series there before, I was dismissed by Chaminda Vaas five times out of six, my highest score was 47 and I was never dominant against them.
“When I got the first century I lied flat on the ground and I told myself I wanted to make it a ‘big one’. I pushed for it and got the triple century.”
No one has scored a double century in his 100th Test. Will Gayle achieve this in Kingston?