Most centuries in Test cricket: Sachin Tendulkar’s 51 leads the list

He made them in 200 Tests between 1989 and 2013, alongside 68 fifties and 15,921 runs — still the most runs anyone has scored in the format.

Most centuries in Test cricket: every batter with 30 or more

Player	Team	Span	Mat	Runs	100s
Sachin Tendulkar	India	1989-2013	200	15,921	51
Jacques Kallis	South Africa	1995-2013	166	13,289	45
Ricky Ponting	Australia	1995-2012	168	13,378	41
Joe Root	England	2012-2026	168	14,208	41
Kumar Sangakkara	Sri Lanka	2000-2015	134	12,400	38
Steve Smith	Australia	2010-2026	125	10,920	37
Rahul Dravid	India	1996-2012	164	13,288	36
Sunil Gavaskar	India	1971-1987	125	10,122	34
Mahela Jayawardene	Sri Lanka	1997-2014	149	11,814	34
Brian Lara	West Indies	1990-2006	131	11,953	34
Younis Khan	Pakistan	2000-2017	118	10,099	34
Alastair Cook	England	2006-2018	161	12,472	33
Kane Williamson	New Zealand	2010-2026	110	9,515	33
Steve Waugh	Australia	1985-2004	168	10,927	32
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	West Indies	1994-2015	164	11,867	30
Matthew Hayden	Australia	1994-2009	103	8,625	30
Virat Kohli	India	2011-2025	123	9,230	30

Joe Root is the one still climbing

Joe Root has 41 Test hundreds, level with Ricky Ponting and ten behind Tendulkar, and he is still playing. His 14,208 runs are already second on the all-time Test run list, ahead of Ponting, Kallis and Dravid, and behind only Tendulkar’s 15,921.

Only three batters in the table above are still active. Root is one, Steve Smith is on 37 from 125 Tests, and Kane Williamson has 33 from 110 — the fewest matches of anyone in the top thirteen.

India’s four

India have four batters in the list. Tendulkar’s 51 leads it, Rahul Dravid made 36 in 164 Tests, Sunil Gavaskar 34 in 125, and Virat Kohli finished on 30 from 123 Tests, his last of them in 2025.

Between them Tendulkar, Dravid, Gavaskar and Kohli scored 151 Test hundreds. That is more than any other country’s batters in this table — Australia’s four have 140 between them, and no one else is above 80.

The name just outside the table

Don Bradman is 18th on this list with 29 hundreds, and he made them in 52 Tests and 80 innings. That is a century every 2.8 innings. Tendulkar needed 329 innings for his 51, one every 6.5, and Ponting 287 for his 41.

Nobody since has come near that. The best rate among the seventeen batters above is Kane Williamson’s, a hundred every 5.9 innings, and he has played more than twice as many Tests as Bradman did.

For the same record in one specific contest, see our list of the players with the most runs in the Ashes, where Bradman’s 19 hundreds are still out on their own.

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Featured photo: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR / AFP