Why are we going on like idiots about a non-event like a hundredth hundred, this half-wit’s holy grail?

By Mukul Kesavan | www.telegraphindia.com

Had Tendulkar scored six more runs in Bombay against the West Indies, he would have climbed a cricketing Everest: a hundred international hundreds. No one has done this before, not even Bradman. And it’s not as if Bradman didn’t have the time: he played international cricket for nearly as long as Tendulkar has done: 20 years. I can hear pedants object that there were no ODIs in Bradman’s time. So? They had Test matches, didn’t they? And if he played only 52 whose fault was that? Slacker.

How many Test centuries did Bradman have? Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine? Tendulkar has 51. If he had gotten those six runs he would have had 52 Test centuries, one for every Test that Bradman played. That would have been a record too. Not as great as a hundred international hundreds, you understand, but a minor landmark in Sachin’s unmatched career.

How well I