Ben Stokes joins the 100 Tests Club. Congrats Skipper and continue to entertain us.

Ben Stokes has become the 76th and latest entrant in the 100 Test club. He became the 16th English cricketer to play 100 tests and joins his countrymen Jimmy Anderson and Joe Root as current players in this club. Stokes has so far in his 100 tests scored 6307 runs and taken 197 wickets and joins Sobers and Kallis as the only three to have the “double” of 6000 plus runs and 150 plus wickets. He is the captain of England since 2022 and has wowed the cricket world with an aggressive brand of cricket, proving himself as a result oriented captain. So far he has led England 23 times in which his team has won 14 times, lost 8 and drawn one test. As a batter he is destructive. Two of his amazing knocks were a 198 ball 258 versus South Africa, and a 135 not out versus Australia at Headingley in 2019. I consider the latter is as one of the greatest knocks in the history of cricket. England were 286/9 and needed 359, and Stokes scored his last 74 in 45 balls to take England to an improbable, amazing, and memorable win.

His 100th Test was certainly not memorable since England had an embarrassing 434 run defeat to go down 1-2 in the 5 test series, but Ben insisted he will still try to go in for wins in the final two tests as well to win the series 3-2. That was not to be though as a clinical Indian team won the last tests too to win the series 4-1. Stokes however will look forward to better times soon.

Stokes is just 32. Looking forward to seeing him and his team entertain us for many years to come.

The test cricketer prior to Stokes Steve to play 100 test matches was Steve Smith. The prolific batter from Australia has the best batting average amongst all the legends and excellent players who are members of this club. He became the 15th Aussie player to join the 100 Test club.

Steve made his debut versus Pakistan in England, and initially he was seen as a leg-spinner who could bat a bit. However, he not only showed that he can bat, but is possibly the best test bat of his generation, with competition from Williamson and Root, of course. He has 32 Test tons and 41 fifties so far, and his average is 58.03. He has 12 test tons versus England, second to only none other than Sir Don Bradman.

Let us have a look at this select list in the 100 test club which is now 80 with the inclusion of Ashwin, Bairstow, Williamson, and Southee.

The player prior to Smith to join the club was Cheteswar Pujara. He had debuted in October 2010 and was the solid middle-order batter India needed to follow in the footsteps of the great Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman. Pujara indeed fulfilled the role desired of him, and as a recent espn-cricinfo article has pointed out, since Pujara made his debut, only 4 players, namely Root, Cook, Smith, and Azhar Ali have faced more balls than him. Grinding down the opposition was the role desired from him, and he has done it admirably well. Pujara has scored almost 7200 runs with 19 centuries and 35 fifties, and an average of 43.60. He was India’s test specialist and has played only 5 ODI’s. In tests, his highest test score is 208, and he has played an important role in many memorable wins for team India. However, after the 2023 WTC Final which India lost, Pujara has been dropped from the Test Squad. His test future is uncertain.

David Warner preceded Pujara. He is just the 4th Australian opening batter to play 100 test matches. The match was at the MCG, and amongst the 1st to convey congrats to Warner was the South African captain, Dean Elgar, who had faced off with Warner in the 2006 U-19 World Cup. Warner will always be remembered as the 1st player to play International cricket without playing 1st cricket. He has tons in all three formats. He is the 1st Aussie and only the 8th player to hit a ton in his 100th ODI. In his 100th Test, he hit a 200, emulating Joe Root as the only two players to do so.

Warner was preceded in this club by Angelo Matthews of Sri Lanka who joined this club on 24th July 2022. Angelo is Sri Lanka’s youngest test captain at just 25 (in 2013), and his crowning achievement as captain was leading Sri Lanka to a series win in England. He was also the captain of Sri Lanka’s T20 World Cup winning team. As on date Angelo has played 104 Test matches and scored 7218 runs at an average of 45.39, with 15 tons and 38 fifties. Recently in the ODI world cup he became the 1st player in history of cricket to be times out without facing a ball when Shakib ul Hasan of Bangladesh appealed as he reached the crease after the stipulated 2 minutes.

The illustrious predecessor of Angelo in this club is none other than Virat Kohli who on March 5, 2022, became just the 71st Test cricketer to play 100 Test matches. In his sterling career Virat has scored 8479 runs with 28 test hundreds and 28 fifties. His test debut was on 20th June 2011 versus West Indies. Virat’s highest score so far is 254*, and his test average is 48.72. He has captained India 68 times and India has won as many as 40 of those 68 tests. In his career, Virat has many records and I am pointing out just one. he is the only Test cricketer to score double-hundreds in four consecutive test series. Even the great Don Bradman and Rahul Dravid have done this feat thrice.

Ishant Sharma who was the 70th is just the second Indian fast bowler after the legendary Kapil Dev to play 100 Test matches. This landmark was achieved on February 24,2021 at Motera, Ahmedabad in the third test of the 2021 England tour to India.

Ishant started his test career under Rahul Dravid. His 100th was under the captaincy of his close friend Virat Kohli, who was the 1st to give him news of his selection to play for India when they were roommates as Ranji Trophy cricketers. Their closeness and friendship can be known from Virat’s warm statement, “When he got selected for India, he was fast asleep in the afternoon and I had to kick him and wake him up to give him the news. That’s how far we go“. Praising Ishant’s longevity, Virat also said that 100 Tests for fast bowlers is as good as 150 for batsmen. Now Virat has joined his good friend in the list.

Prior to Ishant was English cricket captain Joe Root who had become the 69th at Chennai versus India. In his 99 Tests prior to his 100th, Root had an impressive 8249 runs at an average of 49.39. He has 19 test hundreds and 49 test half-centuries with his highest score of 254, which was against Pakistan at Manchester in 2016. Root is a highly proficient ODI player as well and was in the England team which won the 2019 ODI World Cup. He made his test debut versus India on 13 Dec 2012 and it is against India that he played his 100th Test. He is just 33, and certain to be England’s most successful test batsmen of all time. amongst current batsmen. He currently has 11493 test runs with 30 test hundreds and 60 fifties at an average of 49.32. In fact, form and fitness willing, he looks like being the 1st player to overtake Sachin Tendulkar’s career test runs record of 15921.

Root had become just the 9th player to hit a 100 in his 100th test. He emulated his countrymen, Colin Cowdrey and Alec Stewart. Others are Greenidge, Amla, Graeme Smith, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Javed Miandad, and Ricky Ponting. The highest scorer in these hundreds was Inzy with 184 while Ricky Ponting is the only player to have twin 100s in his 100th test. Root hit a double hundred to be the 1st to score a 200 in his 100th Test. He also became the 1st captain after 84 years to have three successive scores of 150 in test cricket. The previous was none other than Don Bradman in 1937.

The 100 Test club is a very rare club. Let us examine some aspects of this club, such as the country-wise division, dominance of batsmen in it, and so on.

The 1st English cricketer to be given a Peerage was Colin Cowdrey. He was also the 1st cricketer to play 100 Test Matches. While the 1st Test match was played in 1877 it took 91 years before Colin became the 1st Cricketer to play 100 tests. However, in the next 56 years, there have been 75 more cricketers to achieve this monumental feat.

All 8 Major cricket-playing Countries have 100 Tests men. Traditional powerhouses England and Australia lead the pack with 17 and 15 cricketers each;

The 17 Englishmen on the list are Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Mike Atherton, Colin Cowdrey, Geoff Boycott, Kevin Pietersen, Alec Stewart, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Strauss, Jimmy Andersen, Stuart Broad, Ian Botham,Joe Root, Ben Stokes, and now Johnny Bairstow

The 15 100 Test Aussies are Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Allan Border, Mark Waugh, Michael Clarke, David Boon, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden, Mark Taylor,  Shane Warne, Glen Mcgrath, Ian Healy, Nathan Lyon, David Warner, and now Steve Smith.

They are followed by India, West Indies, and South Africa which have 14, 9, and 8 “centurions”.

The 14 Indians are Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Virendra Sehwag, Ishant, Kohli, Pujara, and Ashwin.

The 9 West Indians are Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Brian Lara, Des Haynes, Gordon Greenidge, Courtney Walsh, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle, and Carl Hooper.

South Africa has 8 “centurions”. They are Graeme Smith, Gary Kirsten, AB De Villiers, Makhaya Ntini, Hashim Amla, Jacques Kallis, Shaun Pollock, and Mark Boucher.

Rounding off the list are  Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and New Zealand with 5,6, and 6 players in the 100 test club.

Wasim Akram, Javed Miandad, Inzamam ul Haq, Saleem Malik, and Younis Khan are the five from Pakistan with 100 tests. Interestingly talismanic captain and their former PM Imran Khan has played 88 tests and hence is not on the list. Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Murali, Jayasuriya, Chaminda Vaas and Angelo Matthews are the 6 Sri Lankans while Stephen Fleming, Daniel Vettori, Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor, Kane Williamson, and Tim Southee are the six Kiwis.

Now Before analyzing the composition of this 80 let us quickly look at the top 5 batsmen and bowlers in this club taking into consideration some acceptable criteria such as the number of centuries, wickets, number of tests, etc.

Batting. I am looking at 4 widely accepted parameters, here, namely, number of Tests, Number of hundreds, number of runs, and batting average. I am restricting only to the 100 Test Men

Longevity. Sachin Tendulkar is the leader with an astounding 200 Tests, followed by Ponting and Waugh with 168 each, and Kallis with 166. Alastair Cook who retired after playing 161 Tests was expected to take this record but he bowed out at the end of the recent India-England series.

Number of Hundreds. Sachin with 51 is followed by Kallis, Ponting, Sangakkara, and Dravid who have 45, 41, 38, and 36 hundreds respectively.

Number of Test Runs. Sachin leads with 15921 and is followed by Ponting (13378), Kallis (13289), Dravid (13288) and Cook (12472) Cook overtook Sangakkara (12400) in the last test of his career. Creditably, he had announced his retirement at the end of the previous test, and went out with glory, being the 5th cricketer to score a century in his 1st and last test.

Average. Steve Smith leads the list with 58.03, followed by Sangakkara with 57.4. Next are Kallis with 55.37 and Williamson with 55.25. They are ahead of Sachin with 53.78, Younis Khan with 53.06, Lara with 52.88 and Miandad with 52.57. Interestingly Miandad is the only player in the club whose batting average never fell below 50 in his career and among batsmen who played more than 20 Tests only he and Sutcliffe share this record, which even the Great Don does not have. A cursory look at all these criteria shows that middle-order batsmen are dominating. Clearly, opening the batting is a more arduous task.

Bowling. Acceptable parameters are the Number of tests ( longevity), Number of wickets, and Number of Tenners/fivers

Number of Tests. Anderson leads with 187 Tests, followed by Broad with 167, Warne with 145 and Murali at 133.

As regards the number of wickets, Murali at 800 is ahead of Warne (708) Jimmy (700) Kumble (619), and Mcgrath (563).

Murali also leads the Fivers and Tenners list with 67 and 22, followed by Warne with 37 and 10. They are followed by Ashwin, Hadlee, Kumble , Mcgrath and Botham. Interestingly, the great Kiwi, Sir Richard Hadlee is 3rd on the list with 36 Fivers and 9 Tenners even though he with 86 Tests is not in the 100 Test list. Ashwin too is joint 3rd with 36 fivers.

More batsmen than bowlers.

Not surprisingly, there are more batsmen than bowlers in the list. If we loosely divide the list into 4 categories of batsmen, bowlers, all-rounders and wicketkeepers, we see that there are only 4 wicketkeepers, 6 all-rounders (including Stokes), 15 bowlers including Ashwin and Southee, and as many as 55 batsmen (including Steve Smith) on the list.

Does this mean that the longevity of batsmen is more? I, at least think so.

Only 4 wicketkeepers in the list would suggest that keeping is a tough job. Mark Boucher, Ian Healy, Mccullum and Alec Stewart are the only four in the list. Kumar Sangakkara and now Johnny Bairstow too are there of course, but I have put them in the batsman category as often they have played as a pure batsman.

Congrats Ben Stokes for entering this highly privileged and exclusive club, and congrats too to Ashwin, Bairstow, Williamson, and Southee.

( Pics credit; New Indian Express DNA, Guardian, Times of India, Cricketcountry.com, cricket soccer, Hindu, Espn cricinfo Facebook (SRT’s page), ICC cricket and wikipedia)