30 Test hundreds

[mr_mister]

i'd wager 10 bucks all of the big 4 make it to 30

 

[morgieb]

Same thing happens in prediction threads where people (usually morgie) confidently predict that the next bright young thing is a certainty to score x thousand runs/take x hundred wickets without giving any thought as to how difficult a task that is.

*when he was 15 and didn't know any better

 

[Cabinet96]

Noticed I literally did that and posted that Bell should be certain when I was 15.

 

[TheJediBrah]

If they didn't retire earlier than is the norm (forced in the case of Pietersen) they'd have got there one would think.

Also Sehwag fell 7 short @mr_mister

Clarke would've been lucky to make another 30 runs in his career, let a lone get to 30 tons the way he was batting in his last couple series'

Pietersen still needs 7 and had he not been booted when he was may well have been dropped (wasn't exactly in amazing form anyway) and would be 35 now amyway.

No way, Pietersen would have always been among the best, if not the best, England have/had.

He was "dropped" after the 2013-14 ashes, a series in which he was England's leading run scorer. Hard to refer to form in a series where everyone was worse than him. Fun fact: England's second leading run-scorer that series (Carberry) was also dropped never to play Test again.

 

[Furball]

i'd wager 10 bucks all of the big 4 make it to 30

They've all got the talent to, certainly.

The current FTP runs to the 2019 World Cup. The records of the big 4 to date are:

Williamson: 48 Tests, 13 tons
Smith: 41 Tests, 14 tons
Root: 44 Tests, 10 tons
Kohli: 42 Tests, 12 tons

Over the next 3 years, New Zealand are scheduled to play 27 Tests (14 of which are scheduled in the next 9 months), Australia 36, England 36 and India 42 tests. Assuming a similar amount of Tests played in the 3 years to 2022 then Williamson will just sneak over the 100 Test mark in 6 years time, and assuming he keeps up a similar ratio of run scoring in that time will still be 4 or 5 tons short of the 30 mark. He could be even further away if he strikes a poor run of form over the next year as that's when the majority of New Zealand's tests are played (the opposite is of course true that if he maintains his recent standards he could be even closer).

Obviously there's a lot of assumptions and guesswork involved in this but it's an illustration of how difficult Williamson in particular might find cracking the 30 ton mark.

 

[Furball]

Clarke would've been lucky to make another 30 runs in his career, let a lone get to 30 tons the way he was batting in his last couple series'



No way, Pietersen would have always been among the best, if not the best, England have/had.

He was "dropped" after the 2013-14 ashes, a series in which he was England's leading run scorer. Hard to refer to form in a series where everyone was worse than him. Fun fact: England's second leading run-scorer that series (Carberry) was also dropped never to play Test again.

4 tons in 26 games going back to the start of 2012 and an average of 36 in 16 Tests under Cook's captaincy. His position would definitely have been in danger in an alternate universe where he'd been given the 2014 summer in the side.

 

[wpdavid]

In fact Pietersen is a great example of how difficult predicting this sort of thing can be because IIRC he came out of the India series 5 years ago with 19 Test tons to his name in a career that had been 6 years to that point. Off the top of my head in his last 3 years he scored 4 tons - his incredible 3 in 2012 plus one final ton at Old Trafford in the 2013 Ashes to end up on 23. In 2011 nobody would have predicted the way his career ended up.

Only insofar as a flounce at some point was likelier than the boot. But there was always a decent chance that his test career wouldn't be ended by natural causes.

 

[Daemon]

Same thing happens in prediction threads where people (usually morgie) confidently predict that the next bright young thing is a certainty to score x thousand runs/take x hundred wickets without giving any thought as to how difficult a task that is.

Will Alzarri Joseph beat McGrath's record?

Another example is when someone asked whether Blackwood would hit 8000(iirc) test runs after his ton.

 

[Howe_zat]

4 tons in 26 games going back to the start of 2012 and an average of 36 in 16 Tests under Cook's captaincy. His position would definitely have been in danger in an alternate universe where he'd been given the 2014 summer in the side.

It's funny, in 2014 Ballance who couldn't stop scoring runs at the time had already come in for Root at the 5th test in Sydney. So in effect Joe Root who'd been dropped for that test came back in to replace KP as the number 4 in the side. In this alternate universe we might never have given a proper opportunity to the best English batsman for decades.

 

[Howe_zat]

Will Alzarri Joseph beat McGrath's record?

Another example is when someone asked whether Blackwood would hit 8000(iirc) test runs after his ton.

Someone asked that on CW commentary I think. I remember tying to say 'basically no' without disparaging Blackwood in any way, because it's like asking if I'll win the lottery.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Remember how Windie kept telling us that Bravo would get all sorts of ridiculous totals off the back of a good 6 months, done very little since then. So hard to predict what will happen and who is just in a short burst of the form of their life and who is the actual real deal. It would be like saying Woakes is going to get 300 wickets and 4000 test runs off the back of a good few weeks. He may have a very good long career but he may also just be having his Richard Ellison summer when everything he does goes right.

 

[wpdavid]

Remember how Windie kept telling us that Bravo would get all sorts of ridiculous totals off the back of a good 6 months, done very little since then. So hard to predict what will happen and who is just in a short burst of the form of their life and who is the actual real deal. It would be like saying Woakes is going to get 300 wickets and 4000 test runs off the back of a good few weeks. He may have a very good long career but he may also just be having his Richard Ellison summer when everything he does goes right.

This is true, although I think that Ellison's golden summer only amounted to two tests.
But Ellison would be a shoe-in for guys who made a stellar start to their test careers and then disappeared without a trace. Tim Robinson and Nick Cook spring immediately to mind too.

 

[vcs]

AB not a good enough Test player to get there.

He'll get there if SA play often enough, without these interminable gaps which only seem to happen in their calendar. He's had an ordinary couple of series or so, but he'll be back.

 

[vcs]

I hope Williamson and Kohli's run-scoring isn't affected by the extra demands of captaincy (I think Smith has proven that he can deal with it without any impact on his batting). Root is lucky in that sense, I guess.

 

[AndrewB]

This is true, although I think that Ellison's golden summer only amounted to two tests.
But Ellison would be a shoe-in for guys who made a stellar start to their test careers and then disappeared without a trace. Tim Robinson and Nick Cook spring immediately to mind too.

Not sure if success in the 6th and 7th Tests of an 11 Test career counts as a "stellar start", though.
Robinson and Cook probably fit better, although they both had Test careers which meandered on until 1989.

 

[wpdavid]

Not sure if success in the 6th and 7th Tests of an 11 Test career counts as a "stellar start", though.
Robinson and Cook probably fit better, although they both had Test careers which meandered on until 1989.

Ah well, I'd forgotten that Ellison had played five tests before the 1985 Ashes. tbh I thought that he'd only played one or two, but meh.

Robinson and Cook eventually buggered off with Gatting to SA didn't they?

 

[Burgey]

Clarke and G Smith are two great examples of how the century count can suddenly just stop. You can't just assume run scoring will carry merrily on through someone's thirties. Tendulkar, Kallis Sangakkara and Dravid were the weirdos, not the norm, even amonst the world's top batsmen.

Tendulkar went quite some time in his 30s without getting a ton didn't he? I know he had a patch where he wasn't converting starts like he used to. Maybe that was in the lead up to the 100th 100.

Ab (the real one, not the SA pretender) finished on 2 after playing 156 tests. He went about three years in the late 80s/ early 90s without making one iirc. As you say, you can't just assume output will remain the same throughout a career.

 

[Daemon]

Tendulkar went quite some time in his 30s without getting a ton didn't he? I know he had a patch where he wasn't converting starts like he used to. Maybe that was in the lead up to the 100th 100.

Ab (the real one, not the SA pretender) finished on 2 after playing 156 tests. He went about three years in the late 80s/ early 90s without making one iirc. As you say, you can't just assume output will remain the same throughout a career.

'03-06 where he made 3?

It was after the World Cup where his batting went to poo. Starting from England 2011 onwards he played like 20ish tests without a hundred.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Tendulkar wasn't terrible until mid way through the Australian tour of 2012. He was our best batsman in the first two tests and especially in that Melbourne innings, he looked close to his best.

It was in the home season after that that he never looked like getting a big score at all (bar one good innings at Chennai vs Australia)

 

[Daemon]

You're right in that he wasn't terrible, but it was a far cry from the previous series he played in South Africa where he was phenomenal. According to his own high standards he was poor.