Half roar, half rebel yell, loud enough to hear in Leeds. I point to the heavens... this one is for my family

I’ve been batting for more than three and a half hours. I’ve faced 160 balls. I’m on 99 — a nudge, a nick, a heartbeat away from my first Test century. Just one more run. This South African afternoon is heavy with a dry heat. The sky, without clouds, is as bright as the blue in a child’s paint box, and the glare makes everything around me seem profoundly sharper: the sweep of a full, noisy ground, the purple-grey outline of Table Mountain and the vivid emerald of the outfield.

In my head I’m talking all the time. I’m reminding myself, as I always do, of the simple things that are so damned difficult to get right. Stay focused. Appear calm, almost nonchalant. Don’t let the bowlers get on top. And don’t, on any account, show a sign of apprehension.

And I can’t afford to think about what the century will mean, professionally as well as personally.

Most of all, I mustn’t dwell on how I will feel or how I’ll celebrate in the middle. Or how my mum Janet and my sister Becky, who are sitting near the Newlands pavilion, will feel and celebrate too. Or how proud I will make them — this week of all weeks.

In two days’ time it will be the family’s black anniversary: the date of my dad David’s death in January 1998. How quickly that always seems to come around. We mark it only among ourselves, and we do so very quietly, remembering the best of him rather than the tragedy of that day.

New Year creeps up like a forewarning, and we get ourselves ready for the anniversary in our different ways. They say that for sorrow there is no remedy except time. every turn of the calendar puts more distance between us and the raw pain, but even a couple of decades on, it scarcely lessens the degree of it. A stab of that pain always comes back.

When my dad died, I was eight. Becky was seven. My mum had cancer, the first of two bouts that she’s fought and beaten.

In that dark time, the three of us held tight to one another like survivors of a shipwreck.

It was our only way to get through it. Our house, like our lives, seemed bare and empty and quiet, and our grief inconsolable. We were hollowed out. But we had each other then — and we have each other still — and slowly we learnt to live without him. We came to accept his death, even though we don’t understand it now any more than we did then.

I’ve always tried to honour my dad and what he did for Yorkshire, which for him frequently meant putting the county’s cause before his own. But my late boyhood, my early teens and my adolescence were full of net sessions and practice drills he never witnessed, ups and downs he never knew about and matches he never saw. My mum was always there.

So was Becky. We travelled en bloc, inseparable as a family.

Reflecting on it all now, I know categorically that I wouldn’t have come close to a career in cricket without them. In particular I’ve got to where I am because of my mum and Becky. That’s why everything I’ve ever strived for — and everything I’ve achieved — has been done for them.

I’ve wanted to look after them. I’ve wanted to repay them for their backing, their constant belief, even their gentle but persistent nagging. Now I want to score this century for them too.

If I get it, there’ll be tears shed later from each of us. We’ll look at one another, and shared memories of the past will make words superfluous. Just one more run.

When I came in, we were 223 for five, and Ben Stokes was on 24, just warming up. We ended the first day on 315, him on 74, me on 39. He’s now on double Nelson — 222 — and the two of us have taken the score on to 538. Talk about being in the groove.

Then everything happens for me so quickly. The ball is on top of you in a blur. In the time it takes to blink you’re working out speed, trajectory and direction.

even someone of Stiaan van Zyl’s relatively sedate pace demands that. But I see this ball early. And, almost as soon as it leaves his hand, I know its length and line. I also know which stroke I’ll play — a cut past backward point, a shot I’ve executed innumerable times and practised innumerable times.

My dad loved the cut. ‘If they bowl short outside the off stump, it’s bingo,’ he’d say.

This is bingo for me too. I go back and across my stumps. I’m in position, waiting for it before it arrives. This is my moment and I’ve come to meet it.

YOuknow when you’ve hit a good shot. I use a bat that weighs two pounds and nine ounces, and it makes a reassuringly solid sound when I connect properly. The ball pings off the middle. I start to run, but there’s no need. It’s going for four.

The ‘YeS’ I scream in response is half roar, half rebel yell. It’s loud enough for someone to hear it in Leeds. I’m still shouting it, and still wearing my helmet, when I lean back, arms outstretched.

Then I yank my helmet off, kiss the badge on the front of it and hold my bat aloft. I tilt my head upwards. All I see is the unblemished arch of the sky, clearer and bluer than ever. All I hear is the crowd — the clapping, the cheers, the thunder of voices. What I feel is absolute relief and the profoundest joy. I am experiencing what I can only describe as the sense of complete fulfilment, which is overwhelming me.

I’m grateful to Ben. It’s second nature to dash to your partner when he reaches a hundred, sharing the stage with him.

Stokesy doesn’t. He stands back, a spectator like everyone else, allowing me a minute alone.

He knows. Finally, he throws one of those big, tattooed arms around me and says: ‘Soak it up. Take it all in, mate.’ I do.

And what comes back, of course, crowding into my mind, is the past, which puts everything into context. My dad. My grandpa. My grandma. My mum. My sister. I could weep. I could let the tears out, but I fight against them, closing my eyes to dam them up.

My mum is sometimes unable to look when I bat; she might hide in a corridor when I get near a landmark score. I know she’ll have braved this one out, but everyone is standing and applauding so I can’t see her at first.

I point with my bat towards where I know she and Becky are sitting, a gesture for them alone.

eventually the noise of the crowd dies away, and I think of starting my innings again. But first I take one last look at the sky. If heaven has a pub, I hope my dad is in it now. I hope he’s ordering a pint to celebrate.

Then I hope he orders another.