Snobs use statistics to keep game stuck in the past
Modern greats will never receive their due with the dated definition of ‘first-class’ cricket, writes
It is not merely arcane pedantry at stake here, but the very narrative of cricket
Geoffrey Boycott remembers being so nervous he was unable to sleep the night before. Mark Ramprakash spent three months traipsing up and down the country in increasingly fidgety states of agitation. Even WG Grace got the jitters as he approached his 100th hundred at Bristol in 1895. “It was the only time,” his colleague CL Townsend later said, “that I saw WG flustered.”
The moment itself often passes into legend. Boycott’s century at Headingley in 1977 was greeted with a pitch invasion. Donald Bradman said of his 100th century at Sydney in 1947 that he could “never remember a more emotional crowd, nor a more electric atmosphere”. Kiwi opener Glenn Turner celebrated his with a gin and tonic, brought out to the middle.
The ‘century of centuries’ has long been a seminal milestone: a select club distinguishing the immortal from the merely great. Yet as Kumar Sangakkara neared the mark at Chelmsford on Monday, perhaps only a tiny fraction of those present were aware of it. For there was a catch.
Ramprakash, who scored his 100th firstclass century in 2008, will probably be the last man to reach the mark. Sangakkara, who is retiring at the end of the season, has 61. But add in his 38 one-day centuries, and his career total stands at 99.
Yet you will find no tally of this in Wisden, or on any of the internet’s lovingly curated databases. To discover why, you need to understand cricket’s perverse conservatism when it comes to statistics and legacies. Most record books continue to privilege achievements in first-class cricket, even though that description encompasses myriad novelty fixtures from the 19th century, such as Non-smokers v Smokers and Married v Single, and nobody can even agree on a definition.
In an age when batting is multi-format and multi-disciplinary, excluding one-day centuries from a career record is not merely bad data, but entrenched snobbery. Even the terminology – “first-class” – implies that the shorter game is inferior, when in fact it is far harder to score a century when the overs are limited.
Redefining the milestone would give modern greats such as Sachin Tendulkar (142 centuries) and Ricky Ponting (116) their due. And it would remain a gold standard of batting: of the current generation, only Hashim Amla (76), Alastair Cook (70) and Virat Kohli (58) are realistically in a position to overhaul Sangakkara.
It is not merely arcane pedantry at stake here, but the very narrative of cricket. Statistics, like any historical record, are never truly objective. They reflect the priorities and prejudices of those compiling them. They frame our remembrance of the game for future generations. And they have been used to assert the primacy of cricket’s past over its present and future.
Statistics are why Bradman’s position at the pinnacle of the game has become unquestionable, quasi-religious dogma. Statistics are why Chris Gayle will never be regarded as an all-time great, despite his Bradman-esque dominance of T20. Statistics are why everything was better in the old days.
When Sangakkara finally makes that 100th ton – he was out for 84 on Monday – the fanfare will be muted at best. But there is nothing new in that. When Graham Gooch scored a century in India in 1993, nobody was sure whether it was his 99th or 100th. Statisticians insisted a century on the 1982 rebel tour of South Africa was first-class. The International Cricket Council claimed it was not. Gooch, for his part, looked mildly bemused.
Posterity makes fools of us all in the end.