A Hundred Hundreds: Tendulkar’s Final Frontier?

To begin with, what makes cricket exciting is the batsmen breaking records, and the fast bowlers breaking their heads!

And since this week’s open-mic doesn’t deal with the most gruesome bowling ever, I will have to fall back upon the former.

In my time as a lover of the game few things have caused me to have goosebumps like the ovation given to Tendulkar every time he walks in to take guard. Some say it’s over-done. I believe it’s but a humble piece of respect that the man commands in the country, and outside.

What makes Tendulkar irresistible to people who don’t even know a thing about what the person really is like in real life is the numbers he has churned up in the game. Be it his record tally of hundreds in Test cricket before he turned 20, his tally of runs against the Aussies in the one day game, or just the mere number of 50’s notched up in either form of the game, Tendulkar's figures speak volumes about his ability.

From the biggest and greatest, to the most obscure batting records, Tendulkar possesses them all.

So the reader must appreciate the difficulty in just choosing one among these countless figures for this article.

Well, after much deliberation, I guess I have had to settle for one that quite a few have been keeping a tab on, and yet one which seems to be a distant dream looking at Tendulkar’s recent run.

With 39 tons in Test matches and 42 in one dayers, he has amassed a staggering 81 hundreds in international cricket. All this in 564 appearances and 645 innings. At 35, he looks good for at least 3 more years at the highest level, a place where he has spent nearly 2 decades now.

While he already holds the distinction for hitting the most centuries in either form of the game, it would just be brilliant to see the Superman of world cricket score the perfect 100, a century of centuries, a mark he is 19 short of at the moment! Whether he completes this feat, or he falls in the 90’s yet again and leave the world gasping, akin to the Don missing his 100 by .06, only time will tell.

For the moment however, he is quite a few leagues ahead of any competition. While Ponting is breathing heavily down his neck in the Test arena with 35 hundreds, he is almost 20 behind in the shorter format of the game. A tally of 61 tons in about 416 international appearances sees the Australian batting marvel 20 behind the Master.

Considering Ponting himself is 33, one wonders if there is any chance of him catching up with Sach, let alone surpassing his tally!

Tendulkar caught hold of the record a whole decade ago, when, playing against the Australians at Dhaka, he smashed a memorable 141, an inning he coupled with bowling figures of 4-38 to win India the match, knock Australia out of the inaugural Champions Trophy, and of course, equal three all time greats: Sunil Gavaskar (34 Test & 1 ODI hundreds), Sir Viv Richards (24 + 11) and Des Haynes (18 + 17

This effort was only the third incident, at the time, of an all-rounder scoring a ton and capturing 4 wickets in the same game! He also gobbled a catch which neither Richards, nor Astle, the other two to achieve the feat before him, were able to do! That was 28^th October, 1998, Tendulkar’s finest year in one day cricket.

How apt that he equalled that record in a version he has so utterly dominated over the years.

Looking ahead now, barring an extended purple patch in which Ponting may end up scoring fifty Test centuries, it seems highly improbable that any of the current crop of batsmen can rattle up all those hundreds.

Temperamentally there are a few like Kevin Pietersen, Virender Sehwag, who may be seen as possible competitors. But their current conversion rates look dismal in front of Tendulkar’s.

Almost no current player, apart from Tendulkar and Ponting, has close to 50 international hundreds. And with the advent of T20, we may see fewer ODI games. This may very well mean lesser chances for batsmen to get those hundreds (though we did see five batsmen get to the three figure mark during the IPL).

Chris Gayle remains the only player to have an international T20 hundred.

Tendulkar will next be seen, hopefully, during the Tests in Sri Lanka. He is tentatively close to Lara’s career haul of 11,953 runs, and may very well pass that mark in the Emerald Island later this year.

How many more records he will put up, only time will tell. But for the time being, let’s just hope we get to see all those that will be, including the final frontier, in quick time!