Recently Virat Kohli has been in a rich vein of form, scoring 3 one day international centuries in his last four innings and upping his overall average to over 50 with a monumental 183 his most recent effort. He is the quickest to score 10 centuries according to this page (Edit: others have since surpassed this record). The following graphs show the rate at which top ODI century-makers have scored centuries. The first shows the top nine century-makers, while the second graph shows nine who have scored 9-13 centuries in not so many innings. A * next to the player’s name indicates a potential for him to add to his tally.
New plot below (click to interact – updated 28 Oct 2018):
For players who have scored 10 or more ODI centuries, here is a list of those who have scored them with fewest innings/century (updated Oct 21 2023).
Babar Azam* |
5.68 |
Kohli* |
5.69 |
Amla |
6.59 |
Warner* |
7.24 |
Hope* |
7.53 |
de Kock* |
7.79 |
Fakhar Zaman* |
7.80 |
Sharma* |
7.97 |
Finch |
8.35 |
Bairstow* |
8.36 |
MacLeod* |
8.60 |
de Villiers |
8.72 |
Roy* |
9.17 |
Tendulkar |
9.22 |
Root* |
9.63 |
Dhawan* |
9.65 |
Trescothick |
10.17 |
R Taylor |
10.48 |
Stirling* |
10.71 |
Guptill* |
10.83 |
Smith* |
11.00 |
du Plessis |
11.33 |
Gibbs |
11.43 |
Greenidge |
11.55 |
Gayle |
11.76 |
Williamson* |
11.85 |
Ponting |
12.17 |
Saeed Anwar |
12.2 |
We see that current players have a good lead over the rest of the field at this point. One interesting aspect of the above graphs is how many players were fastest to various landmarks of the number of centuries. The following table attempts to capture this (updated Nov 16 2023 – also interactive plot linked at the bottom).
n |
Fastest to n ODI centuries (innings required) |
1 |
17 players (1) |
|
|
2 |
Mohammad Shahzad, Knight (3) |
Ingram, Amiss (4) |
Rahmanullah Gurbaz, W Young, Imam-ul-Haq, P Hughes, Nicol, Porterfield (5) |
3 |
Imam-ul-Haq, J Malan, Ibrahim Zadran (8) |
Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Pietersen, Amiss (9) |
Mohammad Shahzad (11) |
4 |
Imam-ul-Haq (9) |
Ibrahim Zadran (13) |
de Kock, D Malan (16) |
5 |
de Kock, Imam-ul-Haq (19) |
D Malan (21) |
Conway (22) |
6 |
D Malan (23) |
Imam-ul-Haq (27) |
Tharanga (29) |
7 |
Babar Azam (33) |
Imam-ul-Haq (36) |
Amla (41) |
8 |
Amla (43) |
Babar Azam (44) |
Imam-ul-Haq (47) |
9 |
Imam-ul-Haq (48) |
Amla (52) |
de Kock (53) |
10 |
de Kock (55) |
Amla (57) |
Fakhar Zaman (67) |
11 |
Amla (64) |
de Kock (65) |
Babar Azam (71) |
12 |
de Kock (74) |
Babar Azam (75) |
Amla (81) |
13 |
Babar Azam (76) |
Amla (83) |
Kohli, de Kock (86) |
14 |
Babar Azam (81) |
Amla (84) |
Warner (98) |
15 |
Babar Azam (83) |
Amla (86) |
Hope (105) |
16 |
Babar Azam (84) |
Amla (94) |
Kohli, Warner (110) |
17 |
Babar Azam (85) |
Amla (98) |
Kohli (112) |
18 |
Babar Azam (97) |
Amla (102) |
Warner (115) |
19 |
Babar Azam (102) |
Amla (104) |
Kohli (124) |
20 |
Amla (108) |
Kohli (133) |
Warner (142) |
21 |
Amla (116) |
Kohli (138) |
Warner, de Kock (152) |
22 |
Amla (126) |
Kohli (143) |
Warner (153) |
23 |
Amla (132) |
Kohli (157) |
de Villiers (187) |
24 |
Amla (142) |
Kohli (161) |
de Villiers (192) |
25 |
Amla (151) |
Kohli (162) |
Sharma (206) |
26 |
Amla (154) |
Kohli (166) |
Sharma (207) |
27 |
Amla (167) |
Kohli (169) |
Sharma (208) |
28 |
Kohli (181) |
Sharma (213) |
Tendulkar (259) |
29 |
Kohli (185) |
Sharma (217) |
Tendulkar (265) |
30 |
Kohli (186) |
Sharma (234) |
Tendulkar (267) |
31 |
Kohli (192) |
Sharma (245) |
Tendulkar (271) |
32 |
Kohli (194) |
Tendulkar (283) |
|
33 |
Kohli (195) |
Tendulkar (286) |
|
34 |
Kohli (197) |
Tendulkar (298) |
|
35 |
Kohli (200) |
Tendulkar (307) |
|
36 |
Kohli (204) |
Tendulkar (311) |
|
37 |
Kohli (205) |
Tendulkar (321) |
|
38 |
Kohli (206) |
Tendulkar (337) |
|
39 |
Kohli (210) |
Tendulkar (350) |
|
40 |
Kohli (216) |
Tendulkar (355) |
|
41 |
Kohli (217) |
Tendulkar (369) |
|
42 |
Kohli (229) |
Tendulkar (406) |
|
43 |
Kohli (230) |
Tendulkar (415) |
|
44 |
Kohli (256) |
Tendulkar (418) |
|
45 |
Kohli (257) |
Tendulkar (424) |
|
46 |
Kohli (259) |
Tendulkar (431) |
|
47 |
Kohli (267) |
Tendulkar (435) |
|
48 |
Kohil (273) |
Tendulkar (438) |
|
49 |
Kohil (277) |
Tendulkar (451) |
|
50 |
Kohil (279) |
|
|
There are a few Gs involved: Greenidge, Ganguly, Gibbs, Gayle (edit: none of them left now)! Here are some notable spurts of century scoring:
- Zaheer Abbas scored 4 centuries in 6 innings and 5 in 11. (Edit: Sangakkara has since surpassed this with 4 centuries in 4 innings and 5 in 7.)
- A B de Villiers scored 6 centuries in 13 innings and 10 in 34. He has once scored three in a row and five other times scored two in a row!
- Warner scored 6 centuries in 11 innings and 7 in 15.
- Tendulkar scored 7 centuries in 17 innings, 8 in 20, 9 in 26, 10 in 32
- Kohli scored 8 centuries in 15 innings, 11 in 26, and 16 in 50!
- Babar Azam scored 17 centuries in 70 innings.
- Rohit Sharma scored 25 centuries in 99 innings.
Tendulkar’s stats are amazing. He took 76 innings to score his first century, then had 9 after 117 and entered the above list (before recent updates) during an amazing 12 hundreds in 45 innings period. Since then he only had one gap of more than 16 innings between centuries (37 innings from his 41st to 42nd century). Nobody else (until the mid 2010s) had such consistency of century-scoring over a long period.
NEW: You can see more than the top three for each row by viewing this interactive visualisation (example below, data from https://data.world/cclayford/cricinfo-statsguru-data – missing players from Canada, East Africa, Hong Kong, Nepal, Oman, Papua New Guinea, UAE, USA).