Ramprakash has hundreds landmark in sight

For those who shrewdly invest a small portion of their monthly salary in subscribing to The Wisden Cricketer, a treat is in store this month: some ten pages of the latest issue have been devoted to the runs-machine that is Mark Ramprakash, who starts his nineteenth county season this week on 97 first-class hundreds. Those who don't subscribe really ought to dash out and buy the magazine. The fact that I wrote the article is only one reason.

As and when Ramps gets to the landmark, he will be the 25th cricketer in the history of the game to score 100 centuries and the first since Graeme Hick in 1998. I spoke to three of those in the 100 Club - Hick, Graham Gooch and Tom Graveney - about how they reached the landmark. Hick scored his 99th and 100th hundreds in the same game to avoid nerves; Graveney reached his with a mistimed hook over short leg; while Gooch had the agony of thinking he had reached the landmark only for the statisticians to dock one that he had scored on the South African rebel tour.

I also spoke to Dennis Amiss, who returned my call too late for it to make the magazine but his story is worth telling here. Amiss, the Warwickshire and England batsman, got his 100th hundred against Lancashire in 1987 on the last day of a drawn match. "The game was gone and we should have finished early but Clive Lloyd [the Lancs captain] was kind enough to let me have an extra 15 minutes to get the runs," Amiss said. A few matches earlier, when still on 99 hundreds, Amiss played another county and had got into the 80s. "Then a ball climbed on me, took the faintest edge and was caught by the wicketkeeper," he recalled. "I walked, but David Shepherd [the umpire] told me later, 'You should have stayed and got your hundred. I wouldn't have given you out.'"

Ramprakash may well be the last to get to the landmark. Justin Langer has 80, Matthew Hayden 79 and Stuart Law, left, 78 but surely none of them will play for long enough to get to 100. Ricky Ponting has 68, but will have to play until he is 40 to score 32 more at his present rate. When you consider that Marcus Trescothick has only 28 first-class hundreds (14 for England), it is clear that anyone who is going to get to the landmark will have to spend a lot of time, like Ramprakash, not on international duty. There simply aren't the chances for international cricketers. Rob Key, who has scored 35 hundreds, may yet get there but at the age of 28 time is against even him.

Plenty of great batsmen with long careers never crossed the line. Mike Gatting, Maurice Leyland and Gordon Greenidge each played for more than 22 years but could not do it. Ramprakash, 38, has been helped by scoring 18 hundreds in the past two seasons, which twice gave him a season's average of more than 100. Some may say that he has been in such rich form that he should be in the England team.

Graveney told me that he certainly thinks so, but then he may be coloured by his own successful recall to England at the age of 39. That was 40 years ago and cricket was a different game. But how lovely it would be if Ramprakash got his hundredth 100, like Geoff Boycott and Zaheer Abbas, in a Test match. What do you think?

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Comments

[James Roberts]

No, no and no again. Ramps had his chance. In fact he had several under assorted coaches who all recognised his technical quality. Unfortunately he simply wasn't up to the mental pressure of international cricket. He always got out, often stupidly, when it really mattered.

Making shedloads of runs in the County game indicates potential. Averaging 27 as a front line batsman over 50 odd tests in 11 years indicates class.

He's a nice chap, nothing personal, but Fletcher was right (about this and much else). See also Graham Hick.

[anthony from canada]

Now its a no brainer that ramps would do better than when he was younger.He has matured and it would be a cake walk for him.Wake up england.All the best players are more mature.South Africa were crying because they didn't include kallis thinking that 2020 is a youthful game in world 2020.So much for that argument.

[Johnmc]

Just to clarify a point, Baz: when you say Ramprakash was "another victim of the Fletcher era" are you talking of the era in which under Duncan Fletcher England moved from being the utter joke of world cricket to second in the world and capable of beating the best. In which a dedicated coach produced a winning formula by identifying a set of players capable of victory in all circumstances, including several such as Trescothick and Vaughan whose county careers hardly suggested long Test ones. I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for the victims of that regime.

[Offspinner]

It is possible that Sachin Tendulkar could make 100 hundreds, currently he's on 65, but he's only 34 year old and has several years of Test and First Class cricket left in him. If he were to cut down the endless ODI, 20/20 matches and mindless tournaments he could easily achieve this landmark if he is single minded enough, and most likely would already have done it but for these matches. According to Cricinfo he's played 249 FC matches, so he averages one hundred every 3.8 games, on that basis he'd need only play another 123 matches, if he were to play around 20 FC games a season he'd do it around the time he was 40, that is very feasible.

[Offspinner]

Of course Ramps should be playing Test cricket. For no other reason than when he does come to hang up his boots and retire people are going to say fantastic cricketer, best batsman that I ever saw etc, but a Test average of less than 30...

Ramps also owes it to himself to fulfill that talent. A couple of years of Test cricket, culminating in say the next Ashes series would put a great full stop on his career and allow him to wander off into retirement knowing that he made it at Test level.

We all deserve a second chance sometimes, and this reminds me a bit of the baseball film "The Natural" where the character played by Robert Redford returns into the game after a long hiatus to finally fulfill his promise.

[J Rod]

Doesn't this just show what an unfulfilled talent he is?

Had he spent 10 years in the test team, he may have struggled to make this milestone.

[Peter McGuinness]

It's most unlikely that any Australian will get 100 hundreds again, under current circumstances.

It's been many years since Aussies have had anywhere near the amount of games per domestic season that Poms have. Likewise most other countries, I believe. Possibly, a unbelievably unlucky bastard like Stuey Law will again get to play one million county games, but that will mean he has been (unfortunately) denied deserved National honours in small or large part.

Just like poor old Ramprakash.

That is not to take anything away from anyone achieving the feat, of course. However, with schedules being as they are and the likelihood that T20 will eat into the traditionally high number of English domestic first class fixtures; Ramprakash is moving into an exclusive club that may have very, very few new members in years to come...

Of course, as T20 becomes the premier (or only?) form of cricket, 40 may become 'the new hundred', with people like Hick, Amiss and Ramprakesh being remembered in the same way that we muse upon the quaint statistics of players in 'timeless' Tests.

Yippee.

[bill]

In New Zealand none of our batsmen looked confident against either seam or spin and nobody was able to dominate the bowling.Even when Ambrose and Strauss scored centuries they looked likely to get out at any time. England's selectors should ask all of the Test batsmen to play County cricket and one week before the Test select the form players. Past reputations are not an infallible predictor of current potential.

[baz]

Ramps should have been in the Test side for years. The last two seasons have proved just how good he is as a batsman. Another victim of the Fletcher era, but it seems that some of the discards may be worth another look - Sidebottom being the prime example. If he'd been in the side this winter we may not have had the capitulations we did!