History has been created on Friday, 16th March 2012 on Bangladeshi soil by an Indian son whose elders 4 decades back sacrificed their precious lives to give birth to Bangladesh. It is just a coincidence that in a country brought into existence by India whose own celebrated son the great cricket star Sachin Tendulkar scored his 100th hundred and created a history in the cricketing world. This unique record should be kept written in the history book in golden letters.
On the very first day of his birth 39 years back, the elders in his family as I was told, noticed that this child while growing-up itself will turn out to be a wizard and this prophecy finally came to be true from the records he created in the sport called cricket. India gave birth to many wizards in different fields but in cricket Tendulkar stands tall not only in India but in the world. This record he created will last for a long time and I doubt it can be broken by any other cricketer in this century, It was a painstaking and laborious job acquired by Tendulkar by torturing his body on the field for about 3 decades.
For a sportsman to acquire a majestic feat he should also have luck and Tendulkar has it. It is not that of his type world has not seen earlier, in fact in the past world has produced finest batsmen, some of them much better than him. But unfortunately they were unlucky not to get opportunities as Tendulkar got. Earlier there were no IPL, no 50 0vers and no T20 as they are during Tendulkar era. More the tournaments and more the frequency more the opportunities to score more centuries and that’s where Tendulkar is lucky.
A God fearing man with very good character, Tendulkar maintained a very good discipline on the field, in victory he was happy and in loss he showed no resentment and anger thru disapproval, always ungrudgingly accepting “Out” decision by the referee. In scoring centuries he did not jumped in the air with pride as many did but looked up in the sky in humility and praised God. Even acquiring the greatest feat of scoring 100th 100 he showed a low profile gesture without any show of pride.
BEFITTING HIS UNIQUE ACHIEVEMENT AND THE HONOUR HE BROUGHT TO THE NATION BY SCORING one 100 HUNDREDS, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA TO COMMEMORATE THIS FEAT MUST RELEASE A POSTAL STAMP DEPICTING HIM SCORING HIS 100TH 100.
When Brazilian Pele scored his 1000th professional goal in Brazil, Brazilian government issued a special commemorative Postal Stamp in honour of this extraordinary feat which the then president of Brazil said “brought honour not only to Pele personally but more than that to the nation Brazil”. For Pele 2 professional matches evaded him of scoring this goal but finally in the third match he succeeded in scoring this memorable 1000th goal while Tendulkar had to wait for one year to achieve his feat of scoring one hundredth century.
What Pele did in soccer Tendulkar did in cricket. While Pele with his right foot could make the ball do anything he wanted except talk, Tendulkar could make the cricket ball do anything by holding the cricket bat in his right hand. While one skill of Pele, that is, “play the ball off an opponent’s leg” was done by Pele only with perfectness so also Tendulkar performed his speciality of “Effortless Wristy Flick Through Square Leg” as no other cricketer did.
Will such sportsmen come again in our midst? God alone knows.
On behalf of myself and on behalf of all my likeminded friends and colleagues I say “WELL DONE” Sachin Tendulkar.
A. Veronica Fernandes,
Kuwait.
