India, April 24 -- Sachin Tendulkar turns 53 today, carrying a record that the warmth of anniversary writing has consistently failed to honour correctly. The 100 international centuries get presented, almost universally, as a glittering monument - a round number dressed in garlands. The harder reading is more useful, and considerably more honest. It is a record of sustained output across 21 years, seven months and seven days, stretching from his first international hundred in August 1990 to his 100th in March 2012. The monument, examined up close, turns out to be a quarry. Something was being hewn out of it, constantly, for over two decades.

That time span is the actual story. Tendulkar did not build this number in one extended peak and ...