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For years he churned out hundreds like a machine, then it stopped. Sunday offered the best environment to start againBetween March 2011 and and March 2012, the people waited for Sachin Tendulkar. With 99 international centuries, he was on the verge of something nobody else had ever considered achieving. Cricket stats are usually for a niche set of people, but this one grew as time went on. It sprouted tendrils that curled past the nuffies before lacing their way through broader society. For 33 international innings, more and more people watched each time as Tendulkar walked out to bat and returned without a ton. It almost drove them mad.That wait was a year and four days. Virat Kohli’s version dwarfs it. As the man who succeeded Tendulkar as the centre of India’s batting solar system, Kohli churned out hundreds like a machine. His first three years when he was only playing 50-over cricket took some time, but once his Test career started the longest gap he had to abide was eight months. Across the formats he went back to back routinely, three in a row twice, four in five innings at one stage. Before the interregnum, he scored 70 centuries in just over 10 years.Then it stopped. Not for any apparent reason. He kept making starts, kept making scores, some of them big, some unbeaten. He just couldn’t get a hundred – the man whose principal skill to this point had been converting those. A year became two, then approached three. The streak spanned 83 innings. In 26 of them, he scored half-centuries. He just couldn’t get over the line.Of course, it shouldn’t matter. The hundred is an arbitrary number. But batters know that is the measure on which they are judged on most, so of course it matters. Of course it gets in their heads, affects their thinking, which affects their play. The drought across formats finally ended in September 2022, in low-key fashion with a T20 hundred against Afghanistan during an Asia Cup that was treated as a World Cup warm-up. The gap between Test hundreds, though, went on, past three years, out to 42 innings in 24 Tests. Continue reading...