Sachin aala re!!!! Explosion @ Gwalior

24th February, 2010. The Roop Singh Stadium @ Gwalior witnessed one of the spectacles which would be hard to describe in words. The ones who witnessed in at the ground were the luckiest people on earth for this date.
Sachin Tendulkar, who had aldready earned the title of "GOD" in the cricketing circuit many years ago, managed to pull of a feat which many have only come to close to achieving but have never quite made it.
The first double century in one day cricket coming from the blade of one of the icons that India has produced, makes me proud to be an Indian Cricket Fanatic.
Many stars were voted as the best bet to achieve this feat in one dayers.

• Virendar Sehwag
• Chris Gayle
• Brendon McCullum
• Adam Gilchrist
• Mathew Hayden
• Ross Taylor

Many people had come close to achieving this feat before. One can never forget the 194 scored by Saeed Anwar against India @ Chennai. An innings which came to an end, thanks to a spectacular catch by Saurav Ganguly.

Mathew Hayden managed 181 against Bangladesh. He was unbeaten, but never made it to the magic figure.

Sachin had himself come very close to the 200 figure twice. Scoring 186 twice, against the Kiwis, once at Hyderabad and once at Christchurch.

But it was Gwalior which was destined to witness GOD @ work.

25 hits to the boundary and 3 in addition which crossed the ropes.

India winning the match and the series was just the icing on the cake.

Sachin - The person who had a very modest beginning to his career. Getting a bloody nose from a Waqar Younis bouncer in hist first test match and smashing the next ball to the boundary. It was from then he made the news. Career progression happened really fast.

5 world cup appearances.

Mentee under Kapil Dev & Mohammed Azharuddin. Contemporary to Saurav Ganguly & Rahul Dravid and a mentor to Virender Sehwag & Yuvraj Singh. A stunning feat of being part of three different generations of Indian cricket.

A salute to the greatest India and the world has ever seen.

Unfortunately there was no way i could witness all this, for a few reasons

• Afternoon classes (HRM KI & OCD - please note - no choices - it is HRM KI & OCD and not HRK KI or OCD)
• Reading 3 case studies for class the next day ( just a precaution in case the faculty happens to ask you some question or the other related to the same)
• Referring to some notes ( which is necessary, as the concept of a study break becomes obsolete by the time you reach post graduate studies)

By the time i started writing this post, South Africa was all out. Tried catching the match on crictime.com which is known for video streaming, but then i remembered that i use a hostel wifi connection, and there are other desperate souls using the same connection (for whatever purposes that might interest them), so i gave up on that attempt as well.

Sachins achievement today was something that i did not witness myself, but was proud of the fact that it could not happen to a more deserving person. I was passing through phases of euphoria since this evening and now that i sit typing out this post for my blog, in the company of two friends; one who is making futile attempts to search google for the operations strategy of the Reliance Group of Industries for a classroom assignment, and another who has pretty much withdrawn himself from this hallucination called academics and gone off to bed.

This has reminded me of the fact that it is time to get back to some more of what my learned friend (fast asleep from the time of the previous reference to him in this post) would glady refer to (and justify) hallucinations.