Do your think wel ever see another player reach 100 FC hundreds again?

[mr_mister]

Only Hick and Ramprakash have reached the milestone in the last twenty years and it was achieved due to them playing enormous amounts of county games since they couldn’t hold permanent test spots. You need to be a great destroyer of mediocre bowling but not good enough to always be playing international cricket as the hundreds come along more scarcely in that arena.

There’s also the issue of more and more t20 cricket of course. I think Gary Ballance is the best shot but ultimately think it’ll never happen again

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

Poll

Yes

 

[Starfighter]

No

 

[harsh.ag]

Yes.

 

[cnerd123]

Steve Smith

I have a feeling he'll be peeling off tons in the Sheffield Shield well into his 40s.

 

[wpdavid]

Long shot, but maybe Alastair Cook if he plays until he's 40.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Ballance and Cook are extreme outsiders. I wouldn't say "never" as times change. There's a famous piece of commentary by Richie Benaud when Fred Trueman reached 300 Test wickets saying that it would never happen again in the history of Test Cricket. That took only 11 years to happen again, and some less than immortal bowlers have reached it since.

 

[harsh.ag]

Ballance and Cook are extreme outsiders. I wouldn't say "never" as times change. There's a famous piece of commentary by Richie Benaud when Fred Trueman reached 300 Test wickets saying that it would never happen again in the history of Test Cricket. That took only 11 years to happen again, and some less than immortal bowlers have reached it since.

An uppercut to Jimmy Anderson out of nowhere.

 

[morgieb]

Never is a long time, but I can't see it happening in my lifetime.

 

[Starfighter]

The next fastest to the mark after Bradman (295 innings) is Compton with 552 innings. Cook has played 531 innings and only has 65, it will take him 819 innings if he went at his career production rate, which I feel is unlikely in this stage of his career. If he did make the mark, at his career yearly rate he might be only around 43, but I don't see him scoring that much at this stage (only one century so far this year, for example). Ballance scores his at a significantly better rate (one per 6.4 innings against 8.2), but if he doubles his career matches in, say one less year than the first half, that will take him to 80 at age 40 without accounting for any fall off, actually making the mark would take him past 45, again I don't see it. Realistically his production would fall off far sooner.

That's all without accounting for the ECB likely reducing first class fixtures at some point in the not too distant future.

Steve Smith

I have a feeling he'll be peeling off tons in the Sheffield Shield well into his 40s.

The most Shield hundreds is 45 by Lehmann, and he only did it because he spent years not being selected for internationals. Only four non-English players have done it, Bradman, Abbas, Richards and Turner, only 25 have done it in total.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Only four non-English players have done it, Bradman, Abbas, Richards and Turner, only 25 have done it in total.

&, of those, Braddles the only one not to have played significant amounts of county cricket.

I struggle to believe we'll see it again, but if Smith retires from tests at a relatively early age (and frankly I think he should ) and fancies a crack at the CC he might be a shout.

British passport holder so he wouldn't even count as overseas.

 

[wpdavid]

The next fastest to the mark after Bradman (295 innings) is Compton with 552 innings. Cook has played 531 innings and only has 65, it will take him 819 innings if he went at his career production rate, which I feel is unlikely in this stage of his career. If he did make the mark, at his career yearly rate he might be only around 43, but I don't see him scoring that much at this stage (only one century so far this year, for example). Ballance scores his at a significantly better rate (one per 6.4 innings against 8.2), but if he doubles his career matches in, say one less year than the first half, that will take him to 80 at age 40 without accounting for any fall off, actually making the mark would take him past 45, again I don't see it. Realistically his production would fall off far sooner.

That's all without accounting for the ECB likely reducing first class fixtures at some point in the not too distant future.

Bottom line is I don 't think Cook will reach 100 hundreds either. However, it's maybe worth considering how many of his existing FC innings were in test matches, which won't happen in the future.

 

[ankitj]

Who cares about first class records anymore. They were a thing in days of Grace and Hobbs.

 

[cnerd123]

Man I never realised how little FC cricket Smith has actually played. Only 119 games, out of which more than half are Tests. And he's 30. Ridiculous

 

[Red]

Australian test regulars basically never play Sheffield Shield any more.

 

[trundler]

If someone gets like 60+ in tests and then continues to dominate domestically well into his 40s is the only way it could happen. Unless we see Ramprakash 2.0.

 

[Red]

Bradman played 338 innings for his 117 hundreds. The next lowest innings played for 100+ FC hundreds is in the 700s.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Ramps and Hick are two massive outliers in that their test output was so far below their FC return too.

Bevan the only other player I can think of who averages more than 50 in FC cricket and less than 32 in tests from a semi-reasonable sample size and he didn't get that many bites at the cherry anyway.

 

[GoodAreasShane]

Man I never realised how little FC cricket Smith has actually played. Only 119 games, out of which more than half are Tests. And he's 30. Ridiculous

Smith has played 38 Shield games, and about half of them are where he was young and still bowled quite a lot. Hence his Shield average is only 51.78 rather than 60ish.

Warner an even bigger example, has only ever played 19 Shield games in his entire career

 

[AndrewB]

Ramps and Hick are two massive outliers in that their test output was so far below their FC return too.

Bevan the only other player I can think of who averages more than 50 in FC cricket and less than 32 in tests from a semi-reasonable sample size and he didn't get that many bites at the cherry anyway.

Ashok Mankad is another (50/25).