Hallelujah! A nudge off Shakib to square leg and the long wait for Sachin Tendulkar's hundredth international century is over. Blimey, there must be parts of the Sahara experiencing shorter droughts than this! Now we - and hopefully the Indian legend himself - can just relax and enjoy his batsmanship while we still can.
As I write, he is still at the crease near the end of India's ODI innings against Bangladesh and critics are already circling, saying his slow scoring rate has harmed his side's chances of winning. Who cares? Better to score 114 at almost 80 per 100 balls than 0 in one! It's only the Asia Cup, anyway! Oh, he's just been caught behind and receives the standing ovation he deserves. Others will enthuse about the greatness of the man and his place in sporting history, and of course so shall I!
However, even legends struggle sometimes and Tendulkar's year or so without that elusive hundredth ton pales into insignificance compared with the time it took to score his first in ODIs: 76 innings spanning almost five years. His first one-dayer for India came on 18th December in Pakistan, where he scored precisely zero (c Wasim Akram b Waqar Younis)! His next game, ten weeks later in New Zealand, again lasted a mere two balls with no runs. Two matches, two ducks, this sixteen year-old must be useless, eh? Fortunately, he was making a name for himself in Tests and had racked up seven centuries there by the time he made three figures in ODIs for the first time in September 1994. Not bad opposition, either. Against Australia in Colombo, he tonked Glenn McGrath out of the attack and gave Shane Warne a hard time, too, en route to a match-winning 110.
Once he got off the mark, the ODI centuries flowed more steadily, with eight more in the following two years. 1998 was particularly prolific, with nine in the calendar year, including four against the Aussies and three versus Zimbabwe. Today's is 'only' his 49th in ODIs, so another milestone beckons. The 50th Test ton came in January 2011 at Centurion where India lost heavily to South Africa, and that feels like eons ago.
His records just keep on mounting up and it would seem very unlikely that anyone could possibly match his achievements of a hundred hundreds. His nearest rival, Ricky Ponting, is way behind with 71, and would need a pretty amazing few years to catch up with Sachin before the years catch up with him. Jacques Kallis has 42 Test centuries, so could conceivably narrow the gap before retirement. Maybe the growth of T20s could breed a Gayle-like player who can clout centuries in the shortest format without the need to spend much more than an hour at the crease, let alone a day in a Test match. Therefore, reaching the ton of tons in one-dayes alone may not be a fanciful notion. Getting them in Tests and ODIs may be more difficult, although Alastair Cook, for one, may stand a chance. He has 19 in Tests and 4 in ODIs, and is 12 years younger than Tendulkar. AB De Villiers is only slightly older and has 26 to his name, thirteen in each format but, no, surely they won't reach the achievement of Sachin Tendulkar on 16th March 2012.
Anyway, these are mere statistics. His record as a humble man, on and off the pitch, simplay add to the qualities which have made him such a brilliant cricketer, possibly the greatest all-round batsman who ever lived, and arguably second only to Bradman amongst the best in the first-class game.
751 matches and almost 34,000 runs for India are even more impressive numbers but what next for Tendulkar? Will he follow Rahil Dravid into immediate retirement, or announce a date? Will he continue until form and selectors dictate otherwise? I don't know. There is another phenomenal target which beckons: 50,000 senior runs in first-class, List A and T20 cricket. He's fewer than 2000 short of that total. Perhaps today's century in Mirpur will free him of the nervous shackles and allow him to unleash the style and strength such that the runs will flow as quickly as they ever did. No matter. Even if he calls a halt at a press conference after this tournament, I would gladly join the rest of the world in another standing ovation to celebrate the Little Master and his life in cricket.
