Virat
Kohli has announced his retirement from Test cricket, bringing the curtain down
on a career that spanned 14 years and included 123 Tests - 68 of them as
captain - in which he scored 9230 runs at an average of 46.85 – and he has
scored 30 centuries !!
A century (100 runs) in Test innings is a great achievement. In the first Test match played, between Australia and England in March 1877, Charles Bannerman became the first player to score a century in Test cricket. In a match in which no other player scored more than 20 runs in either innings for Australia, Bannerman scored 165 not out. In our times, it was the run machine Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, who had the stylish stance, blend of elegance and grace, application, concentration, patience, dedication, devotion, determination to make runs with solid defence and good array of strokes.
At Kotla, New Delhi in Oct 1983, Marshall produced another spell of furious speed; Gavaskar hit a century of historical significance, his 29th in Test cricket, putting him on level with Sir Donald Bradman and at Chepauk with a 236 he went one step further becoming the highest century maker in Test Cricket. Lot many hundreds have been made since ! and now Sachin Tendulkar stands at the top !
No post
on Cricket but on “Century” – one can hit a century in Carrom and .. .. in
Snooker too !!!
The World Snooker Championship is the longest-running and most prestigious tournament in professional snooker. It is also the richest, in terms of prize money. First held in 1927, it is now one of the three tournaments (together with the UK Championship and the invitational Masters) that make up snooker's Triple Crown Series. The 2025 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2025 Halo World Snooker Championship) was held recently at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the 49th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship was staged at the venue. The winner received a staggering £500,000 from a total prize fund of £2,395,000.
The inaugural 1927 World Snooker Championship, then known as the Professional Championship of Snooker, took place at various venues in England between November 1926 and May 1927. Joe Davis won the final—held at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham—and went on to win the tournament 15 consecutive times before retiring undefeated after the 1946 edition (no tournaments were held from 1941 to 1945 because of World War II.
The top 16 players from the snooker world rankings—as they stood after the 2025 Tour Championship—were seeded through to the main stage at the Crucible. They were joined by the 16 successful players from the qualifying rounds, featuring 128 professional and invited amateur competitors. A record number of players from China—four seeds and six qualifiers, making ten in total—reached the main stage of the tournament.
Kyren Wilson was the defending champion, having defeated Jak Jones 18–14 in the 2024 final to win his maiden world title. He lost 9–10 to Lei in the first round, becoming the 20th player to experience the so-called Crucible curse, referring to the fact that no first-time champion had retained the title since the tournament moved to the Crucible in 1977. Zhao Xintong, competing as an amateur after serving a 20-month ban, won four qualifying matches to reach the main stage. After beating Ronnie O'Sullivan 17–7 in the semi-finals, he defeated Mark Williams 18–12 in the final to win his first world title, second Triple Crown title, and third ranking title. He became the first World Champion from China as well as the first from Asia. The final featured the largest ever age gap (22 years) between two world finalists; it was also the first world final contested between two left-handed players. In China, an estimated 150 million people watched the final.
The main stage of the tournament produced 107 century breaks, the third-highest total on record, and the qualifying rounds produced a new record of 143 centuries. Zhao made 18 centuries across the qualifying rounds and main stage combined, equalling the record set by Ding Junhui at the 2016 event.
In snooker, a century break is a break of 100 points or more, compiled in one visit to the table. A century break requires potting at least 25 consecutive balls, and the ability to score centuries is regarded as a mark of the highest skill in snooker. Joe Davis made the first televised century break in 1962. The player does this by potting red balls and coloured balls alternately, where the coloured balls are repositioned on their starting locations. After repositioning the coloured ball paired to the last red on the table, the six coloured balls are potted in order of their increasing value. Because a break is defined as series of consecutive pots by a player during a single frame, scoring 100 points over the course of a whole frame does not necessarily constitute a century break, as it must be done on a single turn at the table.
O'Sullivan holds the record for the most career centuries in professional competition, with over 1,200. Billiards and snooker are both cue sports, but they have distinct rules, equipment, and requirements. The dimensions of the table are slightly different. Billiards is played with three balls (red, white, and yellow or white and red). Snooker is played with 22 balls (15 reds, 1 yellow, 1 green, 1 brown, 1 blue, 1 pink, 1 black, and 1 cue ball). In Billiards score is by potting the opponent's ball or hitting both object balls with the cue ball. In Snooker it is by potting the red balls followed by the colored balls in a specific order.
Interesting !
Regards – S Sampathkumar
15.5.2025
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