The context of Tendulkar's 100th century will be remembered today, tomorrow, even at the end of his career. Debating societies will exhaust themselves over its significance, particularly what transpired between 99 and 100. But the memory of Tendulkar's labours over the last 12 months will not outlast the hundreds. The numbers will neither be repeated nor surpassed. A hundred hundreds are the stuff of sporting eternity; this is our generation's 99.94.
For an entire year it actually seemed destined to become the 99.94 - a final Bradmanesque flourish of imperfection. In less than three months, between December 2010 and March 2011, Tendulkar had scored four centuries in 12 innings. His march towards the 100th was, we believed, destined. A hundred centuries was a landmark waiting to be reached. Except, of course, like every cricketer will tell you, nothing is merely written, because everything is accounted for. The game sought its dues and Tendulkar paid with with heavy interest. Between Nagpur and Mirpur, he has clanked through various gears to find the form to take him past three figures. From free-flowing to fastidious, from studiousness to abandon, from the purity of shot to anxiety of thought. He came close, went adrift and over and over again.
Tendulkar's failure to get across that ever-receding line had actually begun to shrink the hundred in its import. In the period, he took surprising decisions that have still not been clearly explained: he first missed out on a Test series for the first time in his career for reasons other than injury, and he chose to return to the ODI game after the World Cup, first in Australia and then, to everyone's surprise, in the Asia Cup.
Along with Tendulkar's trials, there was mayhem in India's Test cricket, the team went through two tours from hell. The eight Test defeats were larger than the absence of a Tendulkar hundred. Eight-zero reflects a worrisome future for Indian cricket which is not going away soon. The completion of 100 centuries still stand though for Tendulkar's appetite, drive and sheer cussedness as a competitor over two decades - and the combination of those qualities will be gone from Indian cricket sooner rather than later.
What unsettles some is that Tendulkar's 100th had to arrive in ODI cricket. Mirpur was not pretty, it did not round off a great script, it did not reflect the nobility of the longer version of the game, or indeed, the purity of Tendulkar's own game at its best. India didn't even win. But there it was. Slammed down our throats like a shot of country liquor. Gulp that down, boys.
Yet, it was in the short form cricket that Sachin Tendulkar became the boy-man to walk out for India and it was with 50-over feats that he first grew in the public eye. His identity as team-mate and prodigy, colleague and hero in Test cricket, will remain his most enduring. But one-day cricket has always been bread and butter. Tendulkar has often said that opening the innings in ODIs helped bring a greater range of shots into his Test game. So what if Mirpur was not poetry or fine dining? Right now, bread and butter will do just fine.
The 100 international hundreds are an essential part of the reason why Tendulkar has continued to survive in the game; this desire to put his game into repeated examination, has remained front and centre in his life, over and above everything else - the pop-icon status, the cult, the insane fans, the media circus, the protesting body, the clock, the scorn. The fact that the 100 hundreds even exist is because he wanted questions asked of himself and he found ways to answer them. A few minutes after Mirpur had happened, Sanjay Manjrekar tweeted to say that attention should not be so much on the 100th hundred, "but how he got his 100 hundreds."
It is the Machine, always at his side, purring, growling, always trying to win. He will have to keep it at bay for the rest of his life, but for the moment, with the fortress of a hundred international hundreds around him, Sachin Tendulkar is winning.
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