December 10 - A day to remember for three legends

The legends in connection with this date are Ricky Ponting, Anil Kumble and Sachin Tendulkar.

On this day in 1995, Ricky ‘Punter’ Ponting announced his arrival on the test arena with a well-crafted 96 against Sri Lanka at Perth. His innings ended in an unfortunate manner, when he fell victim to a poor LBW decision, thus failing to join the elite group of cricketers with debut-tons. Ponting went on to score 41 tons and ended his career on the same ground, with an innings of 8 runs.

On this day in 2004, Anil ‘Jumbo’ Kumble became the highest Indian wicket-taker in tests as he overtook Kapil Dev’s 434 wickets against Bangladesh at Dhaka. He went on to take 619 wickets in total, an Indian record, that might remain undisturbed for some time.

And, on this day in 2005, Sachin ‘Master’ Tendulkar broke the world record of Gavaskar’s 34 centuries, when he scored 109 against Sri Lanka at Delhi. He has a record 51 test centuries, and with speculations pouring over his retirement, it will be interesting to see the amount of tons he would gather before hanging his boots.