Will we ever see a 17-ball century?

Golf has a hole in one. Baseball has a perfect game. But what is cricket’s ultimate feat? There are two which come to mind but unlike those aforementioned achievements, neither has been done at the professional level.

For a bowler, taking all 10 wickets from consecutive balls is the loftiest goal. For a batsman, particularly in the age of T20 belligerence, surely it is scoring a century from 17 balls.

Just 10 years ago this would have seemed an impossibility at professional level. Hitting your first 17 balls for six would have been deemed beyond the capabilities of even the most extraordinarily-gifted and powerful batsman.

Yet the trend of modern batting suggests that it is now a distinct possibility. Unless laws are introduced the increase the size of boundaries or offer some other advantages to the bowler, a 17-ball hundred actually appears inevitable.

Players are more muscular and athletic than ever. Batsmen are increasingly adept at hitting balls of any line or length over the boundary. And, perhaps most significantly, bats become more and more potent with every passing year.

The closest anyone has come to this remarkable batting feat at professional level is West Indian blaster Chris Gayle. The long-limbed left hander obliterated the Pune Warriors attack in an IPL game last year en route to registering his century from just 30 balls.

Former Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds had the T20 record for nine years until it was broken by Gayle. In 2004 he went ballistic for Kent and carted Middlesex for a century off just 34 balls.

And then of course there is household name Louis van der Westhuizen, who scored a ton from just 35 balls for Namibia against Kenya three years ago.

In Gayle’s record-breaking innings he actually hit the required number of sixes. It is just that his 17 maximums were not in succession but rather spread across a 66-ball dig which reaped 175 not out.

At 35 years old, Gayle is in the twilight of his career so the ultimate hundred seems out of his reach.

But, as long as the world keeps spinning and cricket keeps being played, a 17-ball hundred will eventually happen. Most likely it will first occur at amateur level (if it hasn’t already in some league so irrelevant that the news didn’t travel).

Some burly no-name batsman will slaughter a park attack which serves him 17 balls right in his hitting zone.

Eventually, professional cricketers will begin to close in on the feat. Imaginations will run wild as a destructive striker begins his innings with six, seven or eight sixes on the trot.

Then a fifty will be brought up from just nine balls. Then social media will go into meltdown as a batsman in a televised limited overs match gets into the 70s from nothing but sixes.

Then, one day, hundreds of thousands of cricket fans will scurry to their TV, laptop, phone, or simply utilise the internet connection embedded behind their ear, to watch a mighty cricketer land that 17th blow.

It will be amazing. But it won’t seem like we’ve witnessed a miracle, as would be the case right now.

Because the boundaries of the achievable are gradually receding. By the time the ultimate hundred is notched, 20-ball tons will have been achieved and 25-ball centuries barely will raise a brow.

Cricket will have become a computer game and batsmen will have access to the cheat code.