Sachin Tendulkar has scored 29 more international centuries than the second-highest tally; it's a mark that is unlikely to be equalled.
Sachin Tendulkar has scored 20 centuries against Australia, at a rate of less than seven innings per hundred.
A century of centuries would have probably never even entered the realms of the achievable for any other cricketer, for so many things needed to fall into place for a batsman to get to that mark.
Despite taking so long over his 100th, Tendulkar still needed only 65 innings to score his last ten hundreds, which is among his better conversion rates. The passage when he was at his most prolific was between his 31st and 40th hundreds, when he needed only 36 innings. In fact, his 14 centuries from the 27th to the 40th took a mere 50 innings, an average of 3.57 innings per hundred.
Among the top sides, it's clear that Australia has been his favourite. A fifth of his centuries have been scored against them, at a rate of one every 6.85 innings. Some of his most memorable hundreds have come against them, be it the two in Sharjah in 1998, or the Test match centuries in Perth, Melbourne and Chennai. Australia is the only side against whom Tendulkar has scored ten or more hundreds in a single form of the game, and his ratio of innings per hundred against them is superior to that against most of the other top sides.
Tendulkar has not played that much against the lesser sides, but he has made those innings count, scoring 19 centuries in 77 innings against Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Kenya and Namibia - an average of one every 4.05 innings. Against Bangladesh, he has scored a century in Tests every time he has gone past 50. Before his 100th hundred, though, Tendulkar had not scored an ODI hundred against them.
Overall, 53 of his hundreds have come in wins, and 24 in defeats. Of those 24, eleven have been in Tests, but that's only reflective of the fact that in difficult conditions he has often fought a lone battle with very little support from the rest of the batsmen.
The wait for Tendulkar's 100th century lasted more than a year and included 33 fruitless attempts, but despite that he still averages a hundred every 7.63 innings, which is the best rate among batsmen with at least 40 hundreds.
It required a batsman to be highly skilled in both forms of the game, and in all sorts of conditions. Then, he needed to open the batting in ODIs, for that offers by far the best chance to notch up hundreds in that format. And, of course, it required top-class fitness levels to achieve the kind of longevity required for a milestone of this nature.
Tendulkar has ticked all those boxes, and then some, scoring runs against all oppositions, in all conditions, in both forms of the game, and over a prolonged period of time.
Overall, through his 22 years of international cricket, Tendulkar has maintained amazingly high standards.
As Daniel Vettori once said: "He has been in form longer than some of our guys have been alive."
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