Hundreds and thousands of runs

In any professional sport, your value is determined by a number – specifically how high a number or, in Tiger Woods' game, how low a number. If you happen not to consistently reach, and consistently increase, the number than is determined by ‘experts’ to be the best you can be, well, it’s probably time to call it a day and get onto designing your own line of stylish sports socks and jocks or start commentating various athletic pursuits, as retired sportspeeps tend to do.

I thought about the obsession with numbers the other day, when I was watching the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground. This is the hundredth test match that the SCG has hosted, and the Indian player Sachin Tendulkar, who is affectionately known as the Little Master in cricketing circles, is under pressure to reach his hundredth century, which means he has ran up and down the wicket a shitload of times.

Up and down, up and down, one hundred million gazillion times. I wonder if the Little Master goes back and forth, back and forth in his dreams, yelling, ‘faster, Little Master, faster!’, to himself in his sleep like some nutso. I think the expectation would be very frustrating. I don't see any other player reaching those lofty heights.

Although, this week, Australian captain Michael Clarke reached 329 (not out) before declaring, which made Ricky Ponting (134) and Michael Hussey (150 not out) look like they were bowlers or something. Apparently Hussey is a bowler, so it makes sense then that he only reached 150. I guess the Australian public is giving away respect, as Clarke’s high score allowed him to go from tosser to hero in the eyes of the country in just a day.

I'm not a fanatic, but I don't mind watching the old cricket, now and again. I especially like how commentators come up with scores of colourful ways to describe how the home team is losing, or winning, as though they spend their time between overs leafing through a thesaurus.

Like any professional side, Team Australia has had its ups and downs over the years, but, unlike some sportstars, I am now comfortable with members of the Australian cricket team inserting the word 'professional' before their occupational titles, which implies a level of competence that is, for the most part, very pointedly not in evidence in many of our other professional sportspeople.