Fastest Century in Cricket: Hundreds and Fifties by Balls Faced

How the Fastest Hundreds and Fifties Are Measured

Each entry counts the legal balls the batter faced up to the moment they reached the milestone, rather than the full innings, which is why the tables show two numbers. De Villiers got to three figures off his 31st ball versus West Indies on 18 Jan 2015 and ended on 149. Brendon McCullum’s 54-ball Test hundred against Australia on 20 Feb 2016 ended on 145.

Because the count comes straight from ball-by-ball records, it is exact for every match in the data. The same innings can appear on two lists: de Villiers’ 149 holds the ODI record for both the fastest fifty, in 16 balls, and the fastest hundred.

The data starts in Dec 2001, so older fast hundreds are simply not counted. Treat these as the fastest in the record book’s data rather than in the full history of the game.

Fastest Century in Cricket's Longer Formats: Tests and ODIs

Three Test hundreds in the data stand apart from the rest. McCullum’s 54 balls leads, ahead of Misbah-ul-Haq (Pakistan) in 56 balls against Australia in Oct 2014 and Adam Gilchrist (Australia) in 57 against England in Dec 2006. Australian batters dominate the rest of the top ten: David Warner and Travis Head both needed 69 balls, against India in Jan 2012 and England in Nov 2025.

In ODIs, de Villiers’ 31 balls stands well clear. Corey Anderson (New Zealand) is second with 36 against West Indies on 1 Jan 2014, the same day Jesse Ryder hit a 46-ball hundred in that match. Glenn Maxwell (Australia) took 40 deliveries versus the Netherlands in Oct 2023, and Asif Khan of the UAE 41 against Nepal in Mar 2023, the only Associate batter in the ODI top ten. Jos Buttler (England) appears twice, with 46 and 47 balls.

Format-wide lists are on the Test records and ODI records pages.

Fastest T20I Hundreds: Where the Associates Lead

The T20I list looks very different from the others. Sahil Chauhan (Estonia) reached 100 in 27 balls against Cyprus in Jun 2024, and Muhammad Fahad (Turkey) in 29 against Bulgaria in Jul 2025. Both came in matches between two Associate teams.

Among the bigger sides, the fastest are 33 balls by JN Loftie-Eaton (Namibia), Sikandar Raza (Zimbabwe) and Finn Allen (New Zealand). David Miller (South Africa) and Rohit Sharma (India) each needed 35 balls in late 2017. Abhishek Sharma (India) got there in 37 balls versus England in Feb 2025, finishing on 135.

Only T20Is in the data are counted. For big hitting more broadly, see most sixes in international cricket and the T20I records page.

Fastest Fifties in International Cricket

The fastest fifty of all took 9 balls. DS Airee (Nepal) hit it against Mongolia on 27 Sep 2023, the same match in which his teammate Kushal Malla made a 34-ball hundred. Adil Butt (Eswatini) is next with 11 balls in Jun 2026. Yuvraj Singh’s 12-ball half-century for India versus England on 19 Sep 2007 is the fastest by a batter from a Full Member nation, matched in balls only by Abidullah Kotwa of Austria.

In ODIs, de Villiers and MW Forde (West Indies) share the record of 16 balls. Three batters, including Martin Guptill (New Zealand) and Liam Livingstone (England), needed 17. Many of the fastest innings ended soon after the milestone: MA Leask (Scotland) made exactly 50 after reaching it in 18 balls. For the biggest innings overall, see the highest individual scores.