100 Test Heroes
When Daniel Vettori played his 100th Test Match against Australia at Hamilton on 27th March 2010 the game of cricket completed a unique half century as the New Zealand skipper became the 50th player in the history of Test Cricket to play 100 Test Matches in a career. The list could have been huge if one considers the fact that there were 13 players who quit the game or were dropped when they had passed 90 tests in their career but were not fortunate enough to reach the 100 test mark either due to loss of form, injuries or lack of motivation. There are three active players in Gibbs, Md Yusuf and Sangakkara who have a chance of reaching 100 test matches in their career and for the record while Sangakkara has played 91 test matches, Gibbs and Md Yusuf have played 90 test matches each.
While 66 players have played 90 or more tests in their career the biggest surprise is that only 3 players have played more than 100 consecutive test matches. While Sunil Gavaskar is the first to achieve this unique milestone, Allan Border holds the world record with 153 test matches but the biggest surpriseof them has been Mark Waugh who played 107 consecutive test matches. Mark Waugh should consider himself lucky to have played 100 plus consecutive matches considering the fact that he finished his career with a modest career average of 41.81 and at no point of time in his career showed signs of being a great player. The fact that Australia plays more matches and Mark Waugh kept himself fit worked heavily in his career.
If one were to conduct a analysis it would not be surprising to see two extremes in the form of players easily able to play 100 test matches in a career but at the same not be able to play 100 consecutive matches. The point is more number of cricket matches played in a year by almost every country also translates and more number of test matches and if one is talented he can get to the 100 test mark in 10 to 12 years while players in an earlier got to play only 6 to 7 tests in a year and therefore a player needed almost 17 to 20 years to get there. However what works against the modern day player in playing 100 consecutive tests is due to the fact that they get injured frequently due to excessive work load on the body and the frequent tours which cuts down possibilities of rest only goes on to complicate things further. There are also players who adopt the pick and choose policy while touring and the perfect example is Australian players who do not prefer to play in hot and humid sub conditional conditions especially the bowlers as there is nothing in the wicket for them and this means players themselves rule out possibilities of playing consecutive matches.
Among modern day players the Australian great Adam Gilchrist called missed out on a unique world record. Gilchrist who holds the world record of playing the maximum tests from test debut called it quits on his terms after playing 96 test matches and had he played 4 more tests he would have become the first ever cricketer in the world to play 100 consecutive test matches from debut. What was surprising about Gilchrist's decision was the fact he quit test cricket when he was just 37 after having played his first test when he was
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