Friday, March 28, 2008

One Day, Two Records !



Two people of the sporting world broke interesting records today. Both hailing from two very distinct cultures and in two very different games had one same result-They joined the club of elites in their respective domains.

One was our very own Virendra Sehwag when he reached the 300 runs mark at the Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai in the Cricket Test series against South Africa, and the other Australian swimmer, Eamon Sullivan, as he raced past to finish his 50m freestyle swimming lap in barely 21.28 seconds at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic centre in the Australian Swimming Championship and Olympic trials.

Virendra Sehwag was still on crease as today's play ended, at 309*, and was looking confident of going ahead and beating Brian Lara's "Highest score in a test match" record of 400 runs not out (held since 2004) in a single innings. With his 300 runs in this innings he enters his second 300 run haul, and joins the club of Sir Don Bradman and Brian Lara , the only other two batsmen in cricketing history who have two 300 run scores against their name. Sehwag had his last 300 against Pakistan at Multan in 2004, where he finished with a score of 309. He will now also hold the record for the fastest ever 300 (in terms of number of balls faced) having ‘blitzkrieged’ to the triple century in a mere 278 balls. While he took 116 balls for his first hundred, he needed only 78 balls for the second and just 84 balls for his third!

Eamon Sullivan on the other hand, broke his own record in today's finals, having just broken the same record yesterday night in the semifinals. The record for the fastest 50m freestyle lap was being held by Alexander Popov of Russia for 8 long years at 21.64 seconds since year 2000. On February 17th this year Sullivan first broke the record with a timing of 21.56 seconds. It was only last weekend in the European Championships that Alan Bernard broke the record again and held it briefly at 21.50 seconds only to be improved by Sullivan in yesterday's semifinals to 21.41 seconds. But today’s record of 21.28 seconds clearly puts him on the lead with 0.36 seconds of improvement over the record held for 8 long years.

While Sehwag will be hungry for Lara's record as game resumes tomorrow with India on the trail by 72 runs, a lot might depend on when Kumble will choose to put the innings to and end! For Sullivan however, his record seriously puts him at the favourites' slot in the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
For now, its wait and watch!!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great achievement by Sehwag and Eamon Sullivan!

Records are meant to be made and broken. It keeps the spirit of competition alive.