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These sorts of landmarks are like birthdays. They get a lot of attention, but they don’t change much. People whinge about how they’re getting older when it’s their birthday, but the truth is that every day of your life you’re a day older than the day before and your birthday’s no different.
Sachin Tendulkar isn’t a better batsman than he was yesterday, he’s just got another hundred to his name and frankly, if you need this many three-figure innings to make your mind up about a batsman, you’re not going to reach too many conclusions during your cricket-watching life.
Say something about this momentous achievement
People always moan at us for failing to acknowledge Tendulkar landmarks properly, but nothing’s really changed. We’ve little to add to the piece we wrote in which attempted to explain the scale of his achievements or the one where we said that Tendulkar has been better than Bradman.
A few people missed the thrust of that second piece, which is that Sachin Tendulkar has achieved things that Don Bradman never had an opportunity to even attempt. We’re not going to compare the two in terms of who is ‘better’ because you can’t compare what one person has achieved with what another probably/possibly would have achieved.
To all intents and purposes, Bradman and Tendulkar played different sports and as far as we’re concerned, both stand alone. We wouldn’t think any more of Bradman if he’d averaged 100 rather than 99 and we don’t really feel any different about Tendulkar now that he’s got a different statistic into three figures.
Never mind all that. Joi Bangla!
I like how a good part of this post is justifying a previous a post.
Is this not applicable to every sporting milestone ever?
The 100th run doesn’t make much difference to a ton either. And it’s often not a particularly good one, like Tendulkar’s meh innings the other day against a poor side that was then backed up with atrocious bowling. Tons are the same. Remember when Ali Cook got to his hundred off the bowler randomly throwing it to the boundary? He still raised his bat then, rather than when he cracked one through point for four when he was on 93.
It’s just about picking a nice one to celebrate amongst the rest. Yeah, it’s a bit weird that we tend to celebrate the ones that make the clock tick over rather than the best ones, but that’s because we are weird and need to be given a system to follow in order to avoid the pressure of thinking for ourselves.
Howe_zat: Yep. See here > http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/when-a-batsman-reaches-100/2011/01/17/
If more of the people who invented maths had been born in Norfolk, Tendulkar would still be quite a way off this achievement.
You should have seen the day after in our papers. It was like all the editors and jounos sat around together and had a communal masturbation session about this nonsense. There was one little article in the back pages mentioning that we had lost the match and blaming it on the bowlers.
Make no mistake, we lost this match BECAUSE of the Sachin hysteria. Our bowlers are very often shite but our total should have been 300+. It wasn’t, because Sachin had to block and prod his way to one of his slowest hundreds to fulfill THEIR expectations.
Poor poor Sachin. If ever the fans didn’t deserve a hero, then this is it.
Congrats to Sachin on his 49th ODI century, further extending his own record. That’s the real milestone.
Sachin is Tops. He has scored a century of centuries and that is a lot. He would be the best batsman ever except for the fact he isn’t doing anything for Sports Relief. He should take a leaf out of Freddie Flintoff’s book. Fred hasn’t scored 100 100s but at is bravely facing the potential vitriol of the general public to catch lemons for the needy. Shame on you Tendulkar, your lack of charity participation means that in my eyes you have scored one less hundred for every pound you have selfishly failed to raise.