Over the next couple of days four players will win their 100th Test cap within hours of each other, in Dharamsala first and then Christchurch. That makes it five in the last month, Ben Stokes having gotten there ahead of the quartet of R Ashwin, Jonny Bairstow, Tim Southee and Kane Williamson.

To some it will be a landmark worth celebrating, a mix of the self-affirmation that athletes humans live for and the idea that duty loyally served is its own reward. Ten years in a job, 15 years of marriage, 100 Tests as a cricketer; I did it, we made it, we’ve built something, these all mean something – at the very least something more than logging a fairly arbitrary numeric landmark. Because what, ultimately, can be the difference in a career lasting 100 Tests rather than 99? One more than a hundred doesn’t change the value of a player, although one fewer allows for some schmaltz and poignancy to slip into the tributes.

For Bairstow, that one Test makes all the difference. Last week his coach Brendon McCullum warned us that it will be emotional. Like a good coach, McCullum was probably half trying to bring out the innings Bairstow has threatened to play all tour but has not. Runs or not, with this week Bairstow confirmed it will be emotional, asking us to “get the tissues” ready.

As it was for Younis Khan, who dreamt of his 100th from the day he made his Test debut. His road to the landmark was very different to Bairstow’s but in both careers it came with the unmistakable sense that getting there has taken far more than skills and ability, taking several lifetimes’ worth of anguish and joy, blood and sweat, tears and toil, loss and renewal.

Might it mean as much to Ashwin? Probably not as much as his 500th wicket, a more definitive and singular achievement – a statement even – of skill rather than just endurance (though the two are not unrelated). Ashwin, as Sid Monga’s interview with him makes clear, has an endearingly balanced take on it. Yes, he is aware of the significance and especially to those around him who have given up so much for it, but no, he’s not one to dwell unduly on it (a bit like his current coach). There are still wickets that need taking.

Williamson and Southee will be similarly inclined, no doubt, though in very Williamson and Southee ways. A celebratory shrug, some pride, zero fuss. There’s a Test to win. In Southee’s case, there’s a career to resuscitate. Stokes played it down in Rajkot – a quiet cap presentation behind closed doors and a suitable public soundbite: “It’s just a number.” Such is the position Stokes now holds that when he says it, it feels like a credo and not just a likable personality trait. Three years ago, and also in India, his predecessor, Joe Root, got to 100 with a little more hurrah, taking in video tributes from, among others, Harry Kane and Ed Sheeran. Root was so emotional he could barely remember his XI when he went out to toss.

Here we are then, at an apposite moment to take stock of the 100-Test career. After this quintet, there might be a handful in the next year or so. Dimuth Karunaratne, Kraigg Brathwaite (both on 89 Tests), Mushfiqur Rahim and Mitchell Starc (both on 88 Tests) are closing in. But then, given how the calendar is being shaped and with it a new arc of playing careers, there is likely to be a bit of a drought.

Two decades ago, the 100-Test cricketer was in danger of becoming a little bit ordinary. The 2000s was a high-water mark, as many as 29 reaching the landmark in that decade, compared to just nine in the ’80s and ten in the ’90s. One hundred Tests was less the end point and more a staging post in a succession of some truly immense careers. Ten of the top 13 Test cricketers with the most caps, all with 140-plus Tests, played substantial portions of their career in that decade. At one point between January 2006 and January 2007, as nine players ticked off that box, it was all a bit run of the mill. The 100-Test celebration package at ESPNcricinfo was as good as a monthly feature, run essentially on rote: a stats dive, a tribute essay, reactions from contemporaries or columns from a team-mate, a photo gallery, and hey, it’s a party.

Since then, it has slowed down somewhat, 17 players in the 2010s and 14 this decade (including this quintet). Rare enough, in other words, to add some lustre again to the achievement. When somebody does something 100 times, we forget the sacrifices and hardships undertaken to do it the first time, to do it even once. Test cricket is not easy. Getting there is difficult enough to be beyond almost all of us. Staying there for 100 Tests? If by that 100th time it is feeling inevitable, then we will do well to remember nothing is inevitable, as life reminds us daily, least of all sporting careers.

It’s tempting to look at the current infrequency of big careers and come to that old, weary conclusion that Test cricket is fading slowly into a state of death. It’s old and weary and not inaccurate. Fewer Tests are being played (partly true), fewer players will get to 100 Tests (probably true). But it’s simplistic. The canvas that Tests are played on has narrowed (which, sure, you could argue is kind of the same thing when eventually said canvas narrows to a dot).

Because one truth about a 100-Test career these days is that it is a badge of privilege, reserved for players of the richest cricket boards and denied to the less well-off members. Like the Gini coefficient, it lifts the curtain on the game’s inequities. No doubt we can comfort ourselves with the facts that the last ten players to get to the landmark came from five different Full Members and that the first ten also came from five different Full Members, and so, we’re still equal.

But it is an illusion. The truth is cricket has always been vastly unequal in the way Tests – what most still agree to be the premium format – are distributed, and the by-product of that is the 100-Test cricketer. Fourteen out of the first 25 players with 100 Test caps (56%) were from Australia and England, the powerbrokers in the game till then. Then India became the powerbroker and 29 of the next 55 100-Test cap players were from India, Australia and England (53%). India’s individual share in the list went from 12% in the first 25 to 20% in the next 55. Overall, 46 of the 80 players (including this week’s batch) in a 12-team universe are from three countries.

Multiple granular examples reinforce this lopsidedness. For example, for each of the 100 Tests Southee will shortly have played since his debut in 2008, Anderson, who relaunched his career in that same 2008 series, has played 1.65. Bairstow debuted four years after Southee and has missed 51 England Tests since, and yet they reach the landmark on the same day.

Karunaratne made his Test debut the same year as Bairstow, has missed only ten Tests that his country has played since and yet still has to play 11 more to get to 100 which, on the current FTP, will be by June 2025. As a guy who likes his numbers, you better believe 100 Tests is a big driver for him.

Once Karunaratne, Mushfiqur and Brathwaite get there, who from teams outside India, Australia and England has a chance to emulate them? Seven South Africans reached 100 Tests in the 2000s and 2010s, Hashim Amla the last in 2017. They play 28 Tests in the current FTP (2023-27) and their most-capped active Test cricketer, Kagiso Rabada, sits on 62 Tests. Rabada is nearly 30, an all-format superstar with demands on his time and body from major T20 leagues, so no wonder Faf du Plessis thinks Amla will remain the last South African to play 100 Tests.

Outside of Afghanistan, Ireland and Zimbabwe, Pakistan now have the fewest Test cricketers with 100 caps (capricious selection has plenty to do with that). Younis was their last in 2015. Will Babar Azam be the next? He’s 29, has played 52 Tests, and has a maximum of 20 Tests until March 2027 in the current FTP. It’s taken him seven years and three months to play 52 (having missed five). It took Cook seven years and nine months to play 100 Tests. In their first seven years and three months, Root played 92 and Virat Kohli 71. Steve Smith played 56 in that span, but he was out of the Australia Test side for two years after his debut.