If you\u2019ve ever been lucky enough to score a century you\u2019ll know how seismic a moment it is when you finally get over the line. Some play the game for a lifetime and never make one, the three-figured kingdom for ever out of reach, a promised land they are destined never to enter. Yet cricket lures you back like a devilish lover. You just can\u2019t quit it. Next time might be your time. It could be you. Why not?<\/p>\n
In cricket the century is the hallmark of individual success for a batter, the team sport unique in the way that it lauds personal milestones. The Test Match Special statistician Andy Zaltzman says that a century \u201ccarves an immutable notch in a player\u2019s history and, at the highest level, an eternal legacy in the annals of the game\u201d.<\/p>\n
The difference between a two- and three-figure score might be only one run but in cricket they may as well be different realms. Galaxies divided by a single. Ask the handful of players who have been out for 99 in Test cricket, they\u2019ll tell you.<\/a> It\u2019s one run and yet it is everything.<\/p>\n Getting close to these \u201cslivers of immortality\u201d has prompted plenty of players, even the greats, to wilt while on the cusp. \u201cI was a little bit nervous,\u201d Jacob Bethell admitted after scoring his sunburst of a maiden first class and Test century<\/a> in Sydney last week.<\/p>\n Bethell spent eight balls on 99, his parents Graham and Giselle and his sister Laura having an entire cattery\u2019s worth of kittens in the Brewongle Stand. Their boy appeared at least to be ice cold, shutting up shop to the returning threat of Mitchell Starc and the unrelenting Scott Boland before seizing on the opportunity to skip down and loft Beau Webster\u2019s off-spin over midwicket to get over the line and carve his first notch.<\/p>\n England\u2019s Jacob Bethell hits out during his sunburst of a century at Sydney. Photograph: David Gray\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cI was nowhere near as nervous as I was in New Zealand when I forgot to watch the ball,\u201d Bethell added, recalling his previous highest Test score of 96<\/a> in the second Test against the Kiwis in Wellington last winter. On that occasion Bethell tried to get over the line with a rasping cover drive off Tim Southee only to edge behind and be caught agonisingly short. \u201cIt would have been flair if I\u2019d smacked him through the covers to bring it up,\u201d Bethell apparently said to Ben Stokes in the dressing room afterwards.<\/p>\n Bethell\u2019s response says much about his confidence in his own talent. \u201cIt was always coming,\u201d he noted matter of factly in the press conference after that first century.<\/p>\n