EVER so rarely one gets to see history unfold in front of one's eyes.
For me, Wednesday will remain etched in memory for one of cricket's most sublime afternoons as the Indian batting legend, Sachin Tendulkar, crafted the biggest individual score ever in the one-day version of the game. At the end of India's allotted batting session of 50 overs against the visiting South African side, Tendulkar stood unbeaten on 200, having opened the batting three and a half hours earlier.
PHOTO SOURCE: AP
The previous highest in a one-day international was 194, shared by two batsmen one of whom, the Pakistani great Saeed Anwar, hit up that score against India during a fixture in Chennai in 1997. The other 194 belongs to Charles Coventry of Zimbabwe.
Anwar, however, had used a runner through most of his splendid innings. Sachin, 36 and already called 'grandpa' by some of his team mates, had scampered his way through the long stint at the increase, except when he was cutting, pulling and driving the ball to all corners of the field. More than once it was a lift over the bowler's head, like a golfer artfully using an eight-iron to loft the ball a middle distance.
Other times, it was a wristy turn from outside the off-stump (right of the wicket) to get the ball screaming along the ground way to the left. And after he got his hundred he treated himself to the field, opening his powerful shoulders to send the ball crashing over the boundary more than once. Most impressively for me, the exultation at the first century and then the double-hundred was measured. No excessive fist pumps. Just a toss of the head, a lifting of the helmet, a gaze at the skies in memory of his late father and a brief moment to accept the congratulations of his fellow players.
It was a reminder that in this day of sledging and refusals to walk even when you know you are out, there still are gentlemen left in the game. Perhaps it was appropriate that this particular landmark took place in Gwalior city, seat of what once used to be one of India's largest and most prosperous princely states under the Raj.
In the dressing room, awed team mates, some of them the lustiest hitters in the game, waved downwards in tribute.
I simply wiped my glasses in disbelief.
What hunger drives this athlete to keep on showing up game after game when his legend is undisputed? It is like Tiger Woods craving for the Majors long after he passes Jack Nicklaus's record of 18, should that ever come to pass.
Tuesday's performance delivered Sachin his 46th 'century' in the one-day game. In Test cricket, the longer version of the sport that is played over five days, he has 47 centuries.
No one in the world has had anything close to this. The batsman with the best chance of getting close to him is the Aussie great Ricky Ponting, the current captain. The poker-faced Ponting, who came into international cricket five years after Sachin made his debut as a 16-year-old cherub, has 29 one-day hundreds and ten more in Tests. But he is only some 20 months younger and with Sachin showing no sign of fatigue it is a good guess that Punter, as he is known, will pass into retirement without troubling Sachin's record.
PHOTO SOURCE: REUTERS
At some point though, there will be that last walk to the crease for Sachin. It will come at a time of his choosing, because no one in India will have the guts to tell him when to go.
I just hope that he has better luck at that moment than the late Don Bradman, the greatest batsman of all time. Playing in his last Test match in 1948, the great Don was bowled for a duck, or zero, in just his second ball. It is possible that the sharpest eyes in the game had missed the line of the ball and its turn because they were filled with tears.
I just hope that Sachin, whom the Don once said he thought had the batting style closest to his own, gets a hundred in his last outing. Certainly, the Don would cheer.