Most Centuries in Cricket: Tendulkar’s 100 and the Format Records

Sachin Tendulkar holds the men’s international record with 100 centuries: 51 in Tests and 49 in ODIs. Virat Kohli is second with 86, including a record 55 ODI hundreds, in the records checked on 10 October 2026. See Cricinfo’s international career table, its ODI records and the ICC’s Tendulkar profile.

The words “in cricket” need a boundary. International centuries, Test centuries and first-class centuries are different records—not interchangeable totals. This article covers men’s career records; women’s cricket has separate record lists.

Most international centuries: the career top 10

A century is an individual score of 100 or more in one innings. A score of 200 or 300 contributes one century to a career tally, not two or three. Two hundreds in separate innings of a Test contribute two.

The international table combines recognised Tests, One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals. It excludes domestic cricket, including the IPL.

Rank	Batter	International centuries	Batting innings
1	Sachin Tendulkar	100	782
2	Virat Kohli	86	632
3	Ricky Ponting	71	668
4	Kumar Sangakkara	63	666
5	Jacques Kallis	62	617
6	Joe Root	61	523
7	Hashim Amla	55	437
8	Mahela Jayawardene	54	725
9	Brian Lara	53	521
10	Rohit Sharma	52	550

Source: Cricinfo, most hundreds in Tests+ODIs+T20Is, checked 10 October 2026. Includes recognised international appearances for representative sides such as Asia XI and ICC World XI, where applicable—not only appearances for a national team.

Tendulkar’s total contains no T20I hundred. Kohli’s breakdown is 30 Test + 55 ODI + 1 T20I = 86. His domestic T20 hundreds do not enter this calculation. Kohli’s career statistics show why “T20” and “T20I” must not be treated as the same category.

Who holds the record in each international format?

The format records below were also checked on 10 October 2026.

• Tests: Sachin Tendulkar, 51. Jacques Kallis follows with 45; Ricky Ponting and Joe Root have 41 each in the checked table. See the Test career records or our fuller men’s Test century leaders.
• ODIs: Virat Kohli, 55. Tendulkar is second with 49. Tendulkar still leads the combined international list, but no longer holds the ODI century record. ODI career records.
• T20Is: Glenn Maxwell and Rohit Sharma, five each. This is the international record, not the record across domestic and international T20 cricket together. T20I career records.

These are career counts. The fastest century records answer a different question: how many balls a batter needed to reach 100.

The separate first-class record: Jack Hobbs’s 199

Jack Hobbs leads Cricinfo’s first-class century list with 199, across 1,325 innings. First-class cricket includes Tests alongside recognised domestic and other first-class matches. His 199 therefore cannot be compared directly with Tendulkar’s 100 international hundreds. First-class career records.

Older accounts give Hobbs 197. Cricinfo’s profile explains that two further centuries on a private tour to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, were subsequently deemed first-class by the Association of Cricket Statisticians. Its current statistical table uses 199. Hobbs’s profile and classification note.

Do not add a player’s Test hundreds to their first-class hundreds: the Test innings are already included. The same overlap applies to ODIs within List A cricket and T20Is within T20 cricket; these are overlapping categories in career statistics, not six independent totals.

What the count says—and what it does not

A career century total measures repeated landmark scores, but also reflects opportunity. Century frequency can be calculated as centuries ÷ batting innings × 100.

In Tests, Tendulkar made 51 hundreds in 329 innings: 15.50 centuries per 100 innings. Don Bradman made 29 in 80 innings: 36.25 per 100 innings. Both calculations use the Test career table.

That is a century frequency, not a batting average or a batting strike rate. Not-out innings remain in its denominator because they were batting opportunities.

Frequency helps separate accumulation from opportunity, but does not adjust for opposition, pitches, batting position or era. Combined-format comparisons add another complication: players had different proportions of Test, ODI and T20I innings, and therefore different chances to reach 100. For a Test comparison, start with Test-only counts and innings; then examine home-and-away conditions and the attacks faced.