How the ranking works

Not all hundreds are created equal. Tons of Consequence ranks every Test century by what it meant, and lets you decide what meaning is.

Two things, two names

The site does two separate jobs, and they use different words on purpose.

• The Greatness score is how great an innings was, from 0 to 100, on the weighting you choose. It drives the rankings. This page explains it.
• A ton of consequence (a ToC) is a yes or no: the side needed the hundred, and it helped them win the match or avoid losing it. A hundred that did not is a good ton. How a ToC is decided has its own page.

They can disagree, and that is the point. A great innings in a lost Test can score high and still be a good ton, not a ToC.

The six criteria

Every innings is scored from 0 to 100 on six things. The scores belong to the innings; how much each one counts is up to you.

• Match ImpactWin probability added, partnership value, whether the innings directly changed the match result.
• ClutchnessThe pressure index: team situation when the batter walked in, must-win context, series stakes.
• NarrativeThe human story: debut, comeback, redemption arc, farewell, playing through adversity.
• Conditions & OppositionPitch difficulty, quality of the bowling attack, weather and overhead conditions.
• Historical WeightRecords set, rivalry significance, ground lore, where this sits in cricket timeline.
• Perceived GreatnessHow often this innings appears in greatest-ever lists, fan polls, retrospective analysis.

Your weighting

You put the six criteria in order. Your first choice carries 30% of an innings’ score, then 22%, 18%, 14%, 10%, 6%. An innings’ Greatness score is the weighted average, out of 100. Two people can rank the same innings differently, and both are right.

Scores fall into four tiers: Legendary (90 and over), Elite (82 to 89), Great (72 to 81) and Notable.

The “most divisive” view finds the innings whose score swings the most between five different points of view, the ones that start the best arguments.

How the Greatness scores are made

Most of the 4,628 innings are given automatic estimates built from the scorecard. The best-known innings are scored and written up by hand.

An innings in a Test that is still being played carries an “In progress” label until the result is known.

How the ToC verdicts are made

3,691 of the 4,628 hundreds have a ToC verdict, and 405 of them are tons of consequence. Each one comes with how firm the evidence is: from the full ball-by-ball record (high confidence), down to the result and a match report (medium). Where we cannot tell, we say so rather than guess. Women’s Test hundreds have their own page, Women’s ToCs.

Where “tons of consequence” comes from

The phrase comes from the Hello Sport podcast: episode #828, 12 Jan 2026, straight after the Sydney Test, where the hosts separate a good ton from a ton of consequence.

They had used the phrase before that. In March 2024 (episode #606) a host says a hundred in an Ashes Test with a draw certain given the weather “wasn’t a ton of consequence”. Nine days later (#609) it turns up again as a joke about living to a hundred.

Where the data comes from

• The original list of centuries was compiled from public cricket records.
• New centuries, and many match results, come from Cricsheet’s open ball-by-ball data.
• Older results and the women’s Test hundreds come from Wikipedia’s lists and tour pages, checked against Wisden, cricket.com.au and match reports.
• Hand-written match notes are checked against published match reports.

New centuries are added every month.