Top 5 current batsmen with most international centuries

The game of cricket has constantly been evolving. While till the early 1970s there was only Test cricket, the format is now losing out to the new entries. With ODI cricket and T20I’s becoming popular, the commercial value of the oldest format of the game has been on the downfall. In order to cover for this, the ICC Test Championship was introduced in 2019 to make the games more meaningful for the viewers.

However, even with the changing formats, one thing which hasn’t lost its importance is the value of scoring centuries. Even today, a batsman is judged on the number of hundreds he has scored. Even in the T20 format, teams look for players who can get in the big knocks.

So why are centuries considered to be so important? Why are the batsmen scoring centuries rated so highly? Well, the answer is simple. Centuries are a mark of consistency, they show that the players are making their inning count. It provides stability and gives your partner at the other end more time to settle.

Let’s look at the currently active batsmen who have scored the maximum number of centuries across all International cricket. We shall also dig deeper and see how many innings they have taken to achieve the feat. Remember it’s not just about the number of centuries you score, but about how frequently you can score them.

Here’s the list of players:

5. Rohit Sharma

The Indian opening batsman, Rohit Sharma requires no introduction. Perhaps one of the greatest ODI openers, if not the limited-overs in totality. He started his career as a middle-order batsman but after initial success, failed to capitalize on the opportunities he got. In a surprise move, MS Dhoni promoted him to an opener in the 2013 Champions Trophy. This is when ‘Rohit Sharma 2.0’ was born.

With 39 hundreds in 370 innings, the smashing opener averages a century every 9.49 innings. He also has 3 double hundreds in ODI’s and 4 hundreds in T20I’s which is the most for a batsman in both the formats. Goes without saying why he is famously known as the ‘ Hitman ‘. He has 6 Test hundreds, 29 ODI hundreds and 4 T20I centuries.

During the 2019 ICC World Cup, he became the first-ever man to score 5 centuries in a single edition of the World Cup breaking Kumar Sangakkara’s record as the Sri Lankan great had hit 4 centuries in the 2015 World Cup. He also went on to become the highest run-getter in the 2019 World Cup with 648 runs. With him starting to open in Test cricket, the centuries seem to be on an upward rise.