How To Score Century In Cricket

As a professional cricket player, a batsman always want to experience the incredible feeling of scoring a century in the cricket match which many young professional players find it difficult to cross the milestone of 100 runs. The reason behind it can be vary from player to player but there are some common mistakes most of the cricket players do when they try to score 100 runs in a match. Therefore, We are going to talking about 5 major things to avoid if you want to score century in cricket match.

Top 5 Tips To Score A Century In Cricket Match

1. Mindset

• Before you play your first ball of the match, You should always go with the correct mindset to play a big innings. What do you you mean by Mindset? Having correct mindset means, you should be very clear about how you are going to approach your innings, How you are going to play your first 10,15 balls, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses like which is the one shot you are going to avoid and hit and most important having a self belief that you can play a big innings.

• All these small things play vital role when you are playing on the pitch, So always make sure to prepare yourself mentally before entering the ground. Big International players like Steven Smith and Virat Kohli had mentioned many times in their interview that they always make their mind prepare for what to do and what not on the field which makes them to score centuries frequently.

2. Playing Shots Too Early

• This is the most common mistake among the young players which is to going for the big shots too early in the innings Now, many people will say why we can’t play shot from the start of our innings? Does it mean to play defensive for couple of overs in the start?

• See, why I am saying not to play shots from begging of your innings is because, No matter how good you play or how great batsman you are you always starts your innings from the “zero”, and playing the shots you want from the start of your innings is always difficult. If you try to play aggressive strokes in the beginning you might think that you can hit but 10 out of 6,7 times you are going to fail, that’s because you will not able to move your foot position effectively and even your mind needs some time to understand the condition of the wicket.

• If you truly want to understand the conditions of the pitch like on which height the ball is coming, how much degree ball is moving things like these, But if you try to play big shots before even knowing all these things you might hit 1 or 2 boundaries but you will not survive for long time.

• Another thing I want to include which is, When I say not to play shots early in your innings some players go too defensive with their approach, even if the ball is on full length they play defense, this is not what I mean.Look if every batsman have one go to shot which they can even play in their sleep, just kidding but understand the context what i am try to say, If you know you are very strong in playing cover drive or pull shot from your first ball then you should go ahead. But it does not mean to play every ball like that if you are confident and it is on your zone it better to play that shot.

3. Ignoring The Singles

• Yes, avoiding the singles which you can take is another thing you definitely want avoid if you are keen to score century in cricket match and one of the best example of this trait is former Indian Cricket Team captain, Virat Kohli. If you ever notice his innings wheather Test, ODI or T20I he always score 30 to 40 percent runs from his running between the wickets.

• Batsman like Virat Kohli, majority of the times will always start his innings with taking quick singles which is the major difference between him and most of the other cricket players. Same thing applies for young cricketer out there who keen to score their first century in the match.

• Moreover, taking quick singles will not only help in adding runs in your account but also it will make your body warmed up for remaining of your innings. Now the problem is, Many coaches and players focuses most of their times on improving their batting skills in the nets but they forget to train for the running between the wickets which is the essential aspect of your game.

• Now, what you can do is, whenever you get time after you training, wear your both the batting pads and take you bat and run at least 25-30 runs daily on the 22 yards wicket as much speed as you can, ultimately what will happen is the speed of running between the wickets will increase which will be very helpful for you to score big runs in the match.

4.  Avoid Distractions

• What do i mean by distractions is, often times when you are nearing your hundred like in 80s and 90s many opposition players will try to make distract from your batting by commenting about you and your game. The perfect example of these distraction which is also called “Sledging” is the Australian team when Ricky Ponting and Steve Smith was the captain, they always try to break the focus of the batsman by passing the comment which sometimes can be personal as well.

• Now, What you can do if you face this situation and I can  give you guarantee that you will going to face it in the future if you haven’t till now. The best reply for the sledging is always no reply, Whenever somebody tries to trigger you by passing any comments on you the best thing you can do is to not to give reply in return, the moment you say something you might lose your focus from batting and in the heat of the moment you can even play some bad shot which can result in the end of your inning.

• But if you are someone which makes your game even better in replying to the sledging comments, then you can have your chat with the opposition, again we will take Virat Kohli as a example, the moment somebody sledges him he turns his anger into motivation on the field which makes him even more dangerous as a batsman.

5. Poor Shot Selection

• Last but not the least, Choosing appropriate shot while you are batting is the 5th major thing you should keep in mind in order to score a century in cricket match. I have seen many players picking wrong line and length of the ball which makes them to play wrong shot which was not supposed to play.

• For example, If the ball is pitching on the outside off stumps and comes on between good length and short pitch length most of the players goes for the cut shot, which cause in the caught out or outside edge. What you can do is always judge the line and length of the ball and play accordingly to it.

• If ball is on the short pitch length then go for the cut shot if it is slightly forward than the shot pitch length then instead of cut shot you can go for the backfoot punch or drive. Same applies for the all the shots in the cricket, if ball is on the appropriate length you can go ahead with your shot it not play defense or leave it.

Conclusion

That’s it this is our top 5 tips to score 100 runs in cricket, although there are many more factors such as visualizing before you play the match, understanding the match situation etc, but these are the major aspects of the game which you should keep in mind if you are keen to get your 1st century in cricket.

Read More : How To Play Cover Drive Shot 

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Dhruvv

Founder and Senior Content Writer at Cric Eye.

Contact me at : founder@criceye.com

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