Ramprakash Focus on Three Figures

It is still his first century that Mark Ramprakash remembers most vividly. And he thought of it again yesterday morning as he packed his bags for the Rose Bowl where today he may become the 25th and probably the final cricketer to score 100 first-class centuries.

"It was for Middlesex against Yorkshire in 1989. Batting at Headingley can be challenging at the best of times and I was up against [Paul] Jarvis, Sidebottom - not Ryan, but his dad Arnie - and [Phil] Carrick. The ball was moving about, I got 128 and we won the game."

As Surrey go into their match against Hampshire today the England batsmen - all substantially inferior players, from a technical perspective - will be finalizing their preparations for a Test at Lord's, cricket's grandest stage. It is a poignant backdrop to Ramprakash's potential piece of history-making.

Last year Ramprakash became the first batsman to average more than 100 in consecutive English summers, and he passed 2,000 runs just as he had the year before. "I was talking to a mate of mine the other day and he told me that I would have to score 4,000 runs and average 200 to get back in the England side. Well, I'll do my best. I've told the selectors that I'm available and I've been told that the door is still open.

"Maybe the fact that I haven't played for England since 2002 gives me my motivation," he adds. "Whereas players like Graham Thorpe, Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton have been able to achieve what they wanted to at international level, it didn't go as well for me. But I'm excited and a little nervous about this week."

At 38, Ramprakash is at the peak of his powers. In his Middlesex years, 14 summers between 1987 and 2000, he scored 51 centuries. In half that time at Surrey he has scored 48 more. Last year he scored an astonishing 30.02% of Surrey's runs which, according to Wisden, is a record for all counties, beating Graeme Hick's 28.96% for Worcestershire in 1988. Hick was also the last to score a century of centuries in 1998.

"Three years ago I made a couple of tiny differences to my batting, my trigger movements, so that I am now into position fractionally earlier and feeling well balanced as the bowler delivers. Oh, and I have a lovely bat."

David Graveney, who as chairman of selectors was tempted to pick Ramprakash last year, remarked that he has become a much more relaxed figure since achieving celebrity status as a ballroom dancer. "I can't believe I will be the last to score 100 hundreds," he says. "I still believe you judge a player by his performances in first-class cricket. But I can see young players being more drawn to the one-day game."

It was Chanu, in Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane, who said: "The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need some things to be certain."

Cricket followers, and perhaps Ramprakash himself, embrace the certainty of this extraordinary player's excellence. And somehow the outside chance of his playing for England again seems less important.