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For a cricketer to score a century (100 runs or more) on his Test match debut is considered a notable achievement, and as of December 2016, it has been accomplished 103 times by 101 players. Two of those players, Lawrence Rowe and Yasir Hameed, have scored centuries in both innings of their debut match. Players representing all ten of the Test-playing nations have scored centuries on Test debut; cricketers playing for Australia have achieved the feat the most often, doing so on twenty occasions, while only two Zimbabwean players have managed it.
In the first Test match played, between Australia and England in March 1877, Charles Bannerman became the first player to score a century in Test cricket. In a match in which no other player scored more than 20 runs in either innings for Australia, Bannerman scored 165 not out. That score remained the highest on debut until R. E. Foster scored 287 for England against Australia in 1903. Foster's innings was the highest score in Test cricket until 1930, and remains the highest score amongst Test debutants. His double-century is one of five made on Test debut, the other four were scored by Rowe, Brendon Kuruppu, Mathew Sinclair and Jacques Rudolph. Eight players (Bill Ponsford, Doug Walters, Alvin Kallicharran, Mohammad Azharuddin, Greg Blewett, Sourav Ganguly, Rohit Sharma, and James Neesham) went on to make centuries in the second test as well; Azharuddin is the only player to score centuries in his first three tests.
When he scored his debut hundred, Bangladesh's Mohammad Ashraful became the youngest player to score a century in Test cricket, at the age of 17 years and 61 days. Adam Voges is the oldest player to have done so, aged 35 years and 243 days when he scored 130 not out for Australia against the West Indies in June 2015. The 100th player to score a century on Test debut is South African Stephen Cook, who scored 115 against England in Centurion in January 2016. The most recent player to score a century on debut is the English batsman Keaton Jennings.
David Hopps, asks "Why is it that 100 Test batsmen, previously unchosen, have now trodden this path?" He notes, "There is often an advantage that bowlers have had no time to explore their deficiencies, but most influential of all must be the hunger that runs through their veins."