Top 5 batsmen with best Innings-to-Hundred ratio in international cricket

Every era in cricket unearths batting talents that are head and shoulders ahead of their contemporaries. Batsmen whose appetite for runs and strive for consistency sets new benchmarks not only for the next generation but also for their peers to emulate.

Yet, one of the most common narratives that engulfs the cricketing circles is comparing a modern great with his predecessor often cynically. We won't be doing it on here as the complication of the coveted list below celebrates the consistency of all these great batsmen over the years.

Criteria: Players to have score minimum 30 international hundreds have been considered for the list .

Here's a look at batsmen over the years with the lowest innings per hundred ratios over the years:

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#5

Matthew Hayden (8.70 innings per hundred)

Hayden sweeping India away during 2001 series.

A farrago of destruction and consistency, Matthew Hayden was a bully as an opening batsman. After spending seven years in the shadow of Michael Slater and Mark Taylor, Hayden announced himself to the cricketing folklore with path-breaking performance in the 2001 tour of India.

The swashbuckling opener who achieved the distinction of scoring at least a thousand runs a year between the period of 2001 to 2005, accumulated 549 runs including a sublime double-hundred in Chennai against a rampaging Harbhajan Singh. Hayden, in few years time would go on smashing the then highest Test score in International cricket when he (380) clobbered an insipid Zimbabwean bowling attack in the summer of 2003. One of Hayden's niche that saw him walk down to fast bowlers and clobber them over their head, established him as an assaulter in chief in white ball cricket.

In a glittering sixteen-year-old career that saw Hayden compile 40 hundred (30 in Tests and 10 in ODIs), a ton, every 8.70 innings, the left-hander's finest hour in white ball cricket arrived in the 2007 Cricket World Cup, where he amassed a barely believable 659 runs to help Australia lift their third trophy in a row and fourth overall.

#4 Sachin Tendulkar (7.82 innings per hundred)

Master Blaster, after scoring his 50th Test ton.

With over 30,000 runs and hundred international 100s, few adjectives come to mind whenever we talk about the emotion that was Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Earmarked for greatness ever since his adolescent days, Tendulkar over the course of a career that spanned 24 years broke and set new benchmarks on his way to immortality in the cricketing folklore.

The first man on the planet to cross the 200 run-mark in limited overs cricket, Tendulkar started his career as a 16year-old against Pakistan in 1989. His match-saving fifty in the final Test epitomized the furor that surrounded his name in the cricketing circles ever since he set foot in Pakistan. Tendulkar didn't look back and registered his debut hundred as a 17-year old in Manchester and followed it up with twin hundreds in Australia in 1991-92.

If Tendulkar's fifty epitomized his tenacity, his hundred at the WACA would establish his credentials as a complete batsman. His promotion to the openers slot in white ball cricket in 1994 transcended Tendulkar's reputation as a brutal hitter of the ball. It was evidently epitomized in a plethora of his breathtaking blitz, none more prudent than the sandstorm assault on the Aussies in 1998.

Apart from technique and temperament, the third tenet that differentiates a competent batsman from a prominent one is longevity. It is this differentiating factors that sets Sachin Tendulkar apart from his contemporaries. His resurgence after tennis-elbow injury and the 2007 World Cup debacle demonstrated tremendous grit and determination. He showed remarkable consistency in the four years leading to the World Cup in 2011, the most productive being 2010.

It was the year that saw the little champion transcend to new highs, including a first-ever double hundred in white ball cricket to follow it up with a blistering Test double hundred at Bengaluru against Australia.

In April 2011, Sachin, the leading run-scorer for India in the World Cup, finally achieved his dream of winning the World Cup and two years later, he hung up his boots, bringing an end to a career that saw him score 100 international hundreds, a hundred in every 7.82 innings.

#3 Steve Smith (7.42 innings per hundred)

Smith's roar after winning the World Cup.

From a leg-spinner who could bat a bit to a batsman marauding towards greatness synonymous to Bradman, Steve Smith's story truly panders to the romantics of this beautiful game. Smith made his international debut for Australia against Pakistan in 2010 as a leg-spinner who could bat a bit, amid skepticism on his credentials by fans and pundits alike. After having copped a plethora of criticism on his selection or his pedigree as a Test match player, Smith was axed from all formats of the game after Australia lost the coveted urn at home to the English in the summer of 2010-11.

However, it was the same opposition three years later that saw the resurgence of Smith. His unorthodox technique along with an exaggerated trigger movement coupled with a constant shuffle paved the way for Smith's redemption as his crucial hundred at Melbourne Cricket Ground as the Aussies to clinched the Ashes in 2013-14. If 2013-14 was an indication of Smith's resurgence, the succeeding season would establish his credentials as the best Test batter. Smith scored over 700 runs against India at home in 2014-15 empowering him to reach the zenith of Test rankings.

Nevertheless, his finest hour in Test cricket arrived last year when he scored a tenacious hundred in the second innings at Pune on a dust-bowl masquerading as the first Test pitch to help Australia win their Test in India since Nagpur, 2004.

Smith's surge in the limited overs format, albeit not in the same proportion, was on full show during the victorious 2015 World Cup campaign for Aussies, where Smith (56 in the finals) fittingly hit the winning run. Smith, in his seven years of international cricket, has already compiled 31 hundred, and with a substantial part of a decade of cricket still left in him, he might just go on to redefine the benchmark of greatness by the time he finishes.

2 Hashim Amla (7.35 innings per hundred)

Amla at the peak of his powers in England, 2012.

The batsman from South Africa, Hashim Amla powers his way to this coveted list at number 2. Earmarked as a prodigious talent, Amla led South Africa in the 2002 U-19 World Cup and was handed his Test debut two years later against India in 2004/05.

Despite him establishing his credentials as a Test batsman with a glittering 149 against New Zealand and an outstanding tour of India in 2010, where he amassed a barely believable 490 runs in three innings and never looked to get out. Amla's finest hour in Test cricket though arrived in the English summer of 2012, where a fasting Amla in an innings of grit and resilience played a marathon inning of 311 and thus became the first South African ever to score a triple ton.

However, despite being a prolific run scorer at Test level, there were constant apprehensions from fans and pundits alike, about his prowess as a limited-overs batsman. Amla quickly dispelled those apprehensions with a 102 and 92 in two matches of the five-match series between West Indies and the Proteas, establishing his might as a prolific limited overs accumulator.

Amla en route to 7421 ODI runs to date became the fastest to reach each of 1000,2000,3000,4000,5000,6000 and 7000 runs ODI runs, a testament to his astonishing levels of consistency. In a glittering career of 14 years, Amla has become a bedrock of South Africa's batting, an astonishing 54 hundred of formats bore a testimony to it.

#1 Virat Kohli (6.51 innings per hundred)

Virat Kohli after his sublime hundred at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2014-15

One of the most mercurial players to have graced the game in the 21st century is India's skipper Virat Kohli. The Delhi batsman rose to prominence after leading India to the U19 World Cup win in 2008. Kohli's sheer passion to win was an instant differentiator during that tournament, and he was awarded his debut as an opener in 2008 against Sri Lanka, but it was only in the December of 2009 that he gave a glimpse of his greatness when he scored his debut hundred in a run chase against Sri Lanka, and a slew of consistent performances and earned him a spot in the star-studded middle order in the 2011 World Cup.

Following his prowess in white-ball cricket, Virat was handed his Test debut against the West Indies in 2011. After mediocre returns in the three Tests and initial failures in Australia, Kohli scored a career-defining hundred at the Adelaide Oval in the fourth Test. That hundred started Kohli's love after with the ground, that saw him hammer two more on his captaincy debut in the summer of 2014-15.

The legend of Kohli is essentially built on his immaculate game sense and playing risk-free conventional cricket by running plenty of 1s and 2s, a testimony to his supreme fitness. Kohli's admittance to getting daddy hundreds has seen him score six double hundreds inside two seasons triggering hopes of the inevitable triple hundred in the future. Kohli's astounding numbers of 56 hundred in 365 innings across formats, meaning he scores a hundred every 6.51 innings, bears testimony to the aforementioned facts.