Patented Records

Well, yesterday in the third day of the 1^st test match between India and South Africa, SachinTendulkar recorded his 47^th test hundred and Virender Sehwag his 19^th test hundred, which is not the discussion here. But, Sehwag's feat of 100 in just 87 balls is one. It has been almost a decade since the newspapers make headlines whenever Sachin Tendulkar scores a hundred. On the otherhand, whenever Sachin Tendulkar used to get out in his nineties, that used to make headlines. So, would be Sehwag whenever he scores a fastest hundred or a fastest double hundred.

In the ongoing 2nd test at Kolkata, Sehwag made headlines for not scoring the fastest fifty when at one stage of the match he was found having a score of 44 from just 22 balls. This has been the usual way that Sehwag's innings have been in the recent past. If anyone scores a hundred with a strike rate of more than hundred the first name that would strike anyone's mind would be that of Virender Sehwag. This can never seems to be broken atleast in the near future. So would be the number of matches played, number of hundreds scored and the number of runs piled by none other than Sachin Tendulkar would be hard to even come closer.

It would take more than a century or even more than that for anybody to come closer to the batting records held by Sachin Tendulkar. The other record that still stands unbroken is the batting average of 99.99 held by Sir Don Bradman that can never be beaten. Then comes the unbeaten score of 400 by Brian Lara and his two scores above 350 and 375 (to be precise). Then on the list would be the perfect 10 taken by Jim Laker and Anil Kumble that can happen only may be once in a century. One has to be lucky to have survived throughout the nineties to have witnessed two such feats.

Scoring 36 runs off an over may not be a distinct feat though it is spectacular and might raise eye brows, with teams like Bermuda and Holland out there. A Last ball six to win a match is also a record of the past when at present there are three such records held by Javed Mianded, a batsman from Zimbabwe (name unable to be recalled) and by Shivnarine Chandrapaul. Though there has been a chase of 400+ total, in the coming years one can expect few more such chases. Some unclaimed records are a perfect 10 in LOIs, 6 wickets in an over, a double hundred in LOIs and a 1000 run in an innings of a test match for a winning cause to mention a few. Are we lucky enough to see them in our life time???