At last the moment has arrived where we will all celebrate Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th 100. He has become the first batsman to achieve this feat. The first time I heard about Tendulkar was when he had scored over 600 runs in that amazing partnership with his childhood friend Vinod Kambli. After that day his was given few sobriquets like “wonder boy” and “small wonder”. That small wonder has achieved something very huge by scoring that ton against Bangladesh on 16 March 2012.
Century of century sounds so unrealistic and insane. The fan waited and waited for a year and four days for it to happen but the wait is finally over. They say that great things come in small packages. He has proved it right time and again. He keeps the statisticians busy while he is at the crease scoring those centuries. In ODIs, he has scored small amount of 49 hundreds which is a world record. He has made hundreds against 11 different countries. He was the first batsman to score a double hundred in an ODI. In tests, he became the first one to reach 50 tons and both the innings were against the formidable attack of South Africans. Wisden named the Indian run machine as the leading cricketer in the world for 2010.
It is a monumental effort when you sit back and think that he made his debut way back in 1989 and he is still around to provide us the entertainment in 2012. He has achieved long cherished dream of being part of a world cup winning team. It was disappointing that people were not that talking about India losing the match. Everyone was talking about the milestone. Perhaps it is easy for us to say that may be nothing is left now for him to achieve and he should hang his boots. But it is best left to the man himself to decide when to declare the innings as it were.
Everything said and done, I think people will agree with me in saying that we are all lucky that we live in the same era as Sachin. May the entertainment continue.