Triple threat: The 16 batsmen with international hundreds in all three formats

The club for players with hundreds in all three international formats has already welcomed Ireland’s Kevin O’Brien and Australia’s David Warner to its ranks in recent months and has now grown again. Belatedly, this exclusive club now features both an England player and a woman AND THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON. Mindblowing, eh.

Heather Knight has put all her male compatriots to shame – and overcome the significant hurdle of playing hardly any Tests – by blasting a match-winning 108 not out against Thailand in the T20 World Cup. Here, then, is the group of heroes the England captain joins.

Chris Gayle (West Indies)
First Test hundred: 175 v Zimbabwe, July 2001
First ODI hundred: 152 v Kenya, August 2001
First T20I hundred: 117 v South Africa, September 2007

The only player to complete the all-format batting Grand Slam – Test triple hundred, ODI double hundred, T20I hundred. It’s a thing. We’re making it a thing. If only so we can call Chris Gayle the greatest batsman ever to play the game and then sit back and enjoy the response. He is undoubtedly the greatest T20 batsman of all time and boasts a Test record – 7000+ runs, 100+ matches, 42+ average – that plenty of five-day-only specialists would happily take for their own.

Brendon McCullum (New Zealand)
First Test hundred: 143 v Bangladesh, October 2004
First ODI hundred: 166 v Ireland, July 2008
First T20I hundred: 116* v Australia, February 2010

Just 34 runs away from a place in Chris Gayle’s Grand Slam club due to an ODI best of ‘only’ 166. We haven’t checked everyone, but we think Virender Sehwag – two of the three ticked off and 32 runs away in the other thanks to a T20 best of 68 – is the only player closer, and he doesn’t even get into the all-format hundreds club. Nor, for that matter, does Sanath Jayasuriya, who is agonisingly only 23 runs shy of a spot but spread across ODIs (189) and T20s (88). Anyway. McCullum. Of course he’s here in this list, smashing the thing around like a maniac. But a nice, friendly one. Like Gayle, a white-ball specialist who also accidentally has a very fine record across over 100 Test matches.

Mahela Jayawardene (Sri Lanka)
First Test hundred: 167 v New Zealand, June 1998
First ODI hundred: 120 v England, January 1999
First T20I hundred: 100 v Zimbabwe, May 2010

The classy right-hander knocked off the first two-thirds of the task with swift, almost indecent ease at the start of his international career and then had to sit and wait six years just for T20 to be invented so he could go about completing the set. Took him a good few years, but he got there. Just. And as for Chris Gayle’s Grand Slam Club: misses out by 56 runs – nothing better than a measly 144 in ODIs for Mahela.

Suresh Raina (India)
First Test hundred: 120 v Sri Lanka, July 2010
First ODI hundred: 101 v Hong Kong, June 2008
First T20I hundred: 101 v South Africa, May 2010

Fitting indeed that India’s greatest ever batsman should be the first from his country to score a century in all three formats. The GOAT. Scored 120 in his first Test innings. Didn’t score another hundred in his other 30. Scored his maiden hundreds in all three formats across a span of barely two years, which is pretty decent. One of only two players on this list to complete the set with his Test century.

Tillakaratne Dilshan (Sri Lanka)
First Test hundred: 163* v Zimbabwe. November 1999
First ODI hundred: 117* v Netherlands, July 2006
First T20I hundred: 104* v Australia, August 2011

For someone who would go on to be remembered as a great innovator and white-ball champion, Dilshan got his first Test hundred almost seven years before his first against the white ball. It took 94 ODIs for Dilly to reach three-figures, and another 60 to get his second. Then scored another 20 of them in his remaining 176. Is it too simplistic to note the dividing line between those two sections of Dilshan’s career split either side of 2005 and the birth of the international format that would ultimately define him? Probably is, yeah.

Martin Guptill (New Zealand)
First Test hundred: 189 v Bangladesh, February 2010
First ODI hundred: 122* v West Indies, January 2009
First T20 hundred: 101* v South Africa, December 2012

The only man to have scored centuries in more international cricket formats than he has toes on his left foot.

Ahmed Shehzad (Pakistan)
First Test hundred: 147 v Sri Lanka, January 2014
First ODI hundred: 115 v New Zealand, February 2011
First T20 hundred: 111* v Bangladesh, March 2014

Excellent Test record, Shehzad: 25 innings, three reasonably chunky hundreds, nine scores below 10.

Faf du Plessis (South Africa)
First Test hundred: 110* v Australia, November 2012
First ODI hundred: 106 v Australia, August 2014
First T20 hundred: 119 v West Indies, January 2015

Imagine spending your whole life being pretty shit-hot amazing at cricket but always in the shadow of another, even better player. Faf gets one over on his old mate AB de Villiers here, though, with his pitiful T20I best of just 79 not out.

Rohit Sharma (India)

First Test hundred: 177 v West Indies, November 2013
First ODI hundred: 114 v Zimbabwe, May 2010
First T20 hundred: 106 v South Africa, October 2015

If he continues to make a success of his Test recall for a while, Rohit – an ODI phenom and owner of four T20I hundreds – enters the best all-format batsman in the world today discussion. Good fun. As someone who scores ODI doubles for fun and appears to have pretty much nailed Test batting – at home at least – also currently vying with Warner as the likeliest second member of CGGSC.

Shane Watson (Australia)
First Test hundred: 120* v Pakistan, December 2009
First ODI hundred: 126 v West Indies, June 2008
First T20 hundred: 124* v India, January 2016

Yes, Watto! Keeping that big old front pad out of the way long enough to score hundreds in all formats like a big bloody legend.

Tamim Iqbal (Bangladesh)
First Test hundred: 128 v West Indies, July 2009
First ODI hundred: 129 v Ireland, March 2008
First T20 hundred: 103* v Oman, March 2016

Bit weird that none of his qualifying innings came against England. Always smacks England about does Tamim.

KL Rahul (India)
First Test hundred: 110 v Australia, January 2015
First ODI hundred: 100* v Zimbabwe, June 2016
First T20 hundred: 110* v West Indies, August 2016

Absolutely no f***ing about from the third Indian on this list. Became just the 12th man to achieve the three hundreds feat and knocked the whole thing off in 18 months. Also achieved it in an almost unbeatable seven matches in total, recording centuries in his second Test, first ODI and fourth T20I. Tidy.

Glenn Maxwell (Australia)
First Test hundred: 104 v India, March 2017
First ODI hundred: 102 v Sri Lanka, March 2015
First T20 hundred: 145* v Sri Lanka, September 2016

For most players on this list, the T20I hundred is the tricky one. Not Glenn. Of course not Glenn. Five international centuries, three of them in T20s. All three unbeaten. #MaxwellBall, that.

Kevin O’Brien (Ireland)
First Test hundred: 118 v Pakistan, May 2018
First ODI hundred: 142 v Kenya, February 2007
First T20 hundred: 124 v Hong Kong, October 2019

Ireland’s first Test hundred. Ireland’s first T20 hundred. And his best international hundred of all doesn’t even matter as far as this list is concerned.

David Warner (Australia)
First Test hundred: 123* v New Zealand, December 2011
First ODI hundred: 163 v Sri Lanka, March 2012
First T20 hundred: 100* v Sri Lanka, October 2019

Warner scored two Test centuries before his first in ODIs, which seems a bit mad. Also mad how it’s taken a player of Warner’s ability and attributes 71 goes to get a T20 century. Anyway, he’s done it now. And on his birthday, so that’s a nice thing to happen. Ticked off two entry requirements for Grand Slam Club membership in the space of little more than a month and now just needs an ODI double-century. Piece of piss.

Heather Knight (England)
First Test hundred: 157 v Australia, August 2013
First ODI hundred: 106 v Pakistan, June 2017
First T20 hundred: 108* v Thailand, January 2020

Knight made a perplexing decision to only play Twenty20 cricket properly once the year was also 2020. We admire that kind of literal thinking even if it is somewhat career-limiting. Having made just one half-century in 56 T20I innings between 2010 and 2019, Knight has made two further half-centuries and now, crucially for this list, a hundred in six games this year. It’s an astonishing transformation: 770 runs at 17.90 and a strike-rate of 111.75 until the end of last year; 290 runs at 58.00 and a strike-rate of 141.46 this year.

No surprise that Knight has just the one Test hundred – she has played just seven games in a decade-long career – but it’s more surprising to see just a solitary ODI hundred on Knight’s record back in 2017. As well as being the first England player to reach the landmark, Heather is also the first Knight to do so. Skittish opening batsmen turned Sky Sports question-mangler Nick pays a hefty price for foolishly being born slightly too early to play T20Is while Heather had the foresight to be born in one of only two countries that still let women play a minuscule amount of Test cricket and at a time that allowed her to pull off her Twenty20 in 2020 scamola. That’s the kind of foresight that separates the greats from the also-rans.