“That's something quite special. If you play 50 international games, some people would call that a great career. To get 50 (ODI) hundreds, I am trying to find the words to describe it, really.” Thus spoke New Zealand’s wonderful captain Kane Williamson, minutes after his team had been knocked out of the World Cup following their 70-run defeat to India in Wednesday’s semifinal in Mumbai. Williamson must have been hurting, bitterly disappointed and wishing he was anywhere else except before 100 mediapersons, but there he was, cool as ice, magnanimous as only he can be, unstinted in his praise of Virat Kohli. Williamson himself, let it be recorded, has 41 international centuries.
Just a few hours previously, Kohli had become the first man to score 50 ODI hundreds, going past Sachin Tendulkar’s long-standing mark of 49 in inarguably one of the most significant matches of his life. He had done so in front of the master himself, whom he saluted in inimitable fashion after first celebrating the milestone with a leap in the air and then sinking to his knees, his palms forming a cup in gratitude and thanksgiving.
In the stands, Tendulkar rose like the rest around him, clapping unabashedly. He must have known that one day, Kohli would numerically go past him in ODIs, at the very least. He didn’t seem unduly perturbed; after all, as he once pointed out, he would be content so long as his record was bettered by another Indian.
Wednesday’s was Kohli’s 80th hundred for the country – he has 29 Test tons and a solitary three-figure knock in T20Is, the knock that delivered a second wind to his somewhat limp sails in September 2022, by which time he had gone 1,020 days without threatening three-figures. He is, however, still a long way short of the little man, sitting on top of the pile with 100 international centuries. Wonder what Williamson would have said of Tendulkar…
Nervous nineties
Many years back, during a Test match against, coincidentally, New Zealand in Ahmedabad, Sadagopan Ramesh had danced into the 90s when he was afflicted by what is referred to as the Nervous Nineties Syndrome. He became edgy and anxious, wanting to breeze by the 90s and get to that magical number of 100. This was in October 1999; Ramesh already had one Test century to his name, but you always want more, don’t you?
Tendulkar, already 46 international hundreds down then, was the non-striker. Almost intuitively grasping that the younger man might be about to do something silly, he ran up to Ramesh and spoke to him for about ten seconds. The words had an immediate impact; Ramesh calmed down and eventually reached 100, sinking into his skipper’s arms, grateful for the words of advice and wisdom.
“My captain said,” he told this writer at the end of the day, “that you have batted a certain way, batted well, to get to 90. If you are good enough to score 90 runs, you are good enough to score 10 more runs batting the same way. Don’t ever forget that.”
As if to show Ramesh that he wasn’t just talking the talk, he could walk it too, Tendulkar trumped the left-handed opener’s 110 by smashing 217. Oh well…
That’s not to say that hundred-making was a breeze even for an established virtuoso like Tendulkar. He has 18 scores of between 90 and 99 in ODIs – dismissed thrice frustratingly for 99 in a four-and-a-half-month period between June and November 2007 – and ten scores between 90 and 98 in Test cricket. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. No one is immune to the Nervous Nineties Syndrome, so why should Tendulkar be any different?
Or Kohli, for that matter, if to a far less degree. He has fallen in the 90s just twice in Tests and a mere six times in ODIs; in two T20Is, both his 90s have been undefeated. Does it mean Kohli is more relaxed in the 90s than Tendulkar used to be? That he doesn’t covet a three-figure knock more than the great man did? That would be easy, naïve, simplistic, wouldn’t it? Especially when one considers that Kohli’s international career has just ticked past the 15-year mark while Tendulkar’s lasted 24 years.
The 90s have a peculiar habit of throwing even the most composed and unflustered individuals out of kilter. The difference between 99 and 100 is just one run, but with so much pomp and hype attached to three-figures, it might as well be a million. The 90s do strange things to people; they often throw them out of gear and equilibrium, compel them sub-consciously to bat differently. Either with greater caution, or with breakneck speed because the journey through the 90s can be stifling, unending, heart-stopping.
And then there are some, like Virender Sehwag, who forever considered the 90s as nothing more than a stepping stone to greater things. The cricketing gods made Viru and threw the mould away because there simply hasn’t been anyone like him, ever – BV (Before Viru) and AV. He treated the 90s with disdainful contempt, spending as little time in them as he could. And so he would dance down the track, attempting to clear – and often succeeding in that endeavour – the longest boundary so that he could get the helmet-whipping and the bat-raising out of the way and continue on his merry ride.
Few other sports are as number-driven as cricket, where a century and a five-wicket haul are the most coveted individual milestones. They are considered the hallmarks of greatness, the sign that separates the men from the boys. Which is why Tendulkar’s 100 international tons are the benchmark the chasing pack is measured against. Which is why Muttiah Muralitharan’s staggering 67 five-wicket hauls in Tests are deified and worshipped and revered and eulogized. Few lament a bowler finishing with a four-wicket haul. That’s by no means considered the equivalent of falling, or being stranded, in the 90s. After all, cricket is nothing if not a batsman’s game, agreed?
At the Wankhede on Wednesday, there were three centurions. Kohli glided through the 90s, Shreyas Iyer took the Sehwag route and Daryl Mitchell was somewhere in between. They all showed that there are different ways to skin a cat. They also reiterated that a hundred doesn’t just materialize, it must be crafted and earned to be celebrated.
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