World Series Cricket (WSC) was a professional

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

competition established by

Kerry Packer Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer (17 December 1937 – 26 December 2005) was an Australian media tycoon, and was considered one of Australia's most powerful media proprietors of the twentieth century. The Packer family company owned a controlling ...

which ran from 1977 and 1979. Packer set the competition up after failing to gain the rights to show Test cricket on his Channel Nine television channel. It was opposed by the

International Cricket Conference The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the world governing body of cricket. It was founded as the ''Imperial Cricket Conference'' in 1909 by representatives from Australia, England and South Africa. It was renamed as the ''International C ...

(ICC), who ruled that such matches would not be first-class, and any players taking part would be banned from playing in officially sanctioned cricket, although the latter was ruled to be a "restraint of trade" and was not enforceable. They also barred the WSC from using the term "Test matches", or naming a team "Australia". As a result, the matches were dubbed "Supertests", while the teams were

WSC Australia XI The World Series Cricket Australia XI was a cricket team representing Australia in World Series Cricket (WSC). Their first game was against the WSC West Indies in 1977. World Series Cricket ended in 1979 after the Australian XI tour to the West I ...

, WSC West Indies XI and

WSC World XI The World Series Cricket Rest Of The World XI was a cricket team representing the Rest of the World in World Series Cricket (WSC). Their first game was against the WSC Australia XI, Australia XI in 1978. World Series Cricket ended in 1979 after t ...

. In all, 16 Supertests and 58 international one-day matches were played, before Packer and the Australian Cricket Board came to an agreement in May 1979, and World Series Cricket came to an end. The first Supertest began on 2 December 1977, although the first

century A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. A centennial or ...

(100 or more runs in a single

innings An innings is one of the divisions of a cricket match during which one team takes its turn to bat. Innings also means the period in which an individual player bats (acts as either striker or nonstriker). Innings, in cricket, and rounders, is bot ...

) was not scored until the third match, in which Ian Chappell accumulated 141 runs in the first innings.

Bruce Laird Bruce Malcolm Laird (born 21 November 1950) is a former Western Australian and Australian cricketer. He was an opening batsmen who played in 21 Test matches and 23 One Day Internationals. He also played 13 "Supertests" in World Series Cricket. ...

and Viv Richards went on to score centuries in the same match. A month later,

Barry Richards Barry Anderson Richards (born 21 July 1945) is a former South African first-class cricketer. A right-handed "talent of such enormous stature", Richards is considered one of South Africa's most successful batsmen. He was able to play only four ...

achieved the competition's first double century, scoring 207 runs for the WSC World XI. In the same innings, Gordon Greenidge and Richards also passed a hundred, while Greg Chappell did so in the second innings for WSC Australia XI. In the next match, Greg Chappell surpassed Richards' total, remaining 246 not out, one of his record five WSC centuries. Only two centuries were made in the international one-day matches. Kepler Wessels scored the first, accruing 136 runs; his score is the highest in WSC one-day international matches, and makes him the only player to have scored a century in both a Supertest and an international one-day match in the WSC. The other century was scored by

Martin Kent Martin Francis Kent (born 23 November 1953) is a former Australian cricketer who played in three Test matches and five One Day Internationals in 1981. Career Kent was a middle-order right-handed batsman. He scored 140 on his debut for Queen ...

, who scored 109 runs. In all, 25 centuries were scored in Supertests, and 2 in international one-day matches. Seven of the centuries were scored at VFL Park in Melbourne, the most of any venue.

Key

Century scores

Notes and references

Notes References {{featured list Centuries World Series Cricket

Key

Century scores

See also

Notes and references