jack hobbs has scored the most first class centuries in history.
jack hobbs has scored the most first class centuries in history.
who has scored the most first class centuries in history?
jack hobbs
in contrast to previous seasons following an australian tour, hobbs was extremely successful in 1925. early in the season, hobbs scored three consecutive centuries at the oval and the press began to speculate that he may soon pass the record of 126 first-class centuries held by grace. he continued to score a string of hundreds in away matches and by mid-june had become the first man in the season to reach 1,000 first-class runs. against cambridge university, hobbs hit centuries in both innings, and followed with centuries in his next two innings to give him four in succession. hobbs played with great freedom during this spell, and after a brief lull in his run-scoring, hit 140 in the gentlemen v players match at lord's, playing a range of shots. his 12th century of the season, against kent on 20 july, took him to 125 first-class centuries and one short of grace's record. by now, the press and public were eagerly following hobbs' progress in the expectation he would break the record, and great publicity surrounded his every move. amid the pressure, and as fatigue set in, hobbs lost form. although he continued to make substantial scores, he could not reach a century; after one innings of 54, a newspaper headline proclaimed that "hobbs fails again".
later cricket career of jack hobbs
disputes regarding the first-class status of a number of matches in which w. g. grace played have resulted in him having varying career statistics published. of his centuries, 124 were scored in matches universally accepted as being first-class, these are the figures which are published on both cricinfo and cricketarchive. a number of further matches are considered to be first-class by some sources; in these matches he scored two centuries: for the "gentlemen to canada touring team" against the marylebone cricket club in 1873, and for gloucestershire against somerset in 1879. grace, in his 1899 reminiscences, records both of these centuries among his tally of first-class centuries. in "wisden cricketers' almanack"s first-class records section, he is listed as having scored 126 centuries, the eleventh most hundreds scored during a career. he retains this position with the lower total of 124, also appearing eleventh on cricinfo's list.
list of first-class cricket centuries by w. g. grace