If you’ve ever been lucky enough to score a century you’ll know how seismic a moment it is when you finally get over the line. Some play the game for a lifetime and never make one, the three-figured kingdom for ever out of reach, a promised land they are destined never to enter. Yet cricket lures you back like a devilish lover. You just can’t quit it. Next time might be your time. It could be you. Why not?
In cricket the century is the hallmark of individual success for a batter, the team sport unique in the way that it lauds personal milestones. The Test Match Special statistician Andy Zaltzman says that a century “carves an immutable notch in a player’s history and, at the highest level, an eternal legacy in the annals of the game”.
