I remember that afternoon in Colombo when you approached your first hundred. It had to be Australia, and you were in sublime touch, and you so wanted that first one. You made 110 in 130 balls, but oh, you agonised over those last 15 runs before you got to the century. In a sense, it was like that with the last one too, wasn't it? It was in those moments only that you were a bit like us, that you wanted something so badly, you let it affect your game. But between those two, you were always so much fun, in that belligerent, ruthless, adolescent first phase, in your second, rather more mature and calculated, existence, and of course in that joyous last. What fun that was. The 163
in Christchurch, the 175
in Hyderabad, that 200
in Gwalior, the 120
in Bangalore, the 111
in Nagpur. If it hadn't been for that devilish
100th, would you have continued playing the same way? That 100th hurt you, didn't it, as it did all of us, and I guess we didn't help you by not letting you forget. When the big occasion came, you always played it like another game, even though you knew it was a big day, like those
two classics in CB Series finals in 2008, or, of course, those
unbelievable nights in Sharjah in 1998. But this 100th took away four or five more.