The best soundtrack from the Mani Ratnam - Ilayaraja duo!

Ah! This is an extremely hard proposition to nail down. It's almost like asking a mom to select the best of her kids. However zeroing on the options at hand, it's really hard to pick as each of the soundtracks had something or other going for them.

But narrowing down deeper, if I would have to select one album that truly defines the Mani-IR combo or even Tamizh cinema as a whole, I would have to go with Agni Natchathiram. The compositions were light years ahead of it's times and packed a punch by being way too uber cool.

The usage of drum kits came to the forefront with this album. The hep hipster version of Ninukori took the country by storm. It almost felt absurd to completely makeover an out and out carnatic composition in an all together new avatar but the result obtained was stupendous. The intro number Rajathi Raja was a trailblazer and Oru Poongavanam is a song which will make you float in air. Rojapoo Adivandhadhu was a monstrous composition with the bass bazooking from all sides and of course the seductive Thoongatha Vizhugal in Amrutha Varshini ragam is another scorching number.

The close competitors for this album include Mouna Ragam, Nayagan, Thalapathi, Anjali and even the rather supposedly tame Pagal Nilavu and Idhaya Kovil which had very nice melodies as well as some foot tapping songs.

But for sheer versatility and dexterity, my unanimous vote goes to Agni Natchathiram, a revolutionary soundtrack for the ages. It still retains the impact and kick and that is likely to stay on forever.

Longest standing record in Test Cricket (1877 to till date) - Highest % of runs in a completed test innings

Records have been usurped time and again over generations and it is almost inevitable that most records tend to get broken as the game of test cricket keeps evolving. However I am not sure if this  particular record will ever be broken as it has stood the test of time and has stayed on as a record for a mind boggling 140 years now.

It took place in the very first official cricket test match played at Melbourne, Australia in March 1877 and despite over 2000 test matches played since then and almost one and a half centuries being passed, the owner still stakes coveted claim to this elusive title of owning the highest % of runs in a completed test innings.

Coming to the statistics now, Charles Bannerman who incidentally was also the first person to face a delivery in test cricket on Mar 15th 1877 ended up scoring 165* out of Australia's total of 245. No other person passed even 20 and his individual score made up a staggering 67.34 % of the total. He is the only one who has crossed the coveted figure of 2/3rds of the total runs made by the team individually.

There have been batsman carrying their bat through the innings, making individual scores of 400, one player alone standing ground resolutely with others caving in but nobody has gotten past the distinction of 2/3rd of the total score. The second in line who came very close to beating Bannerman’s record was Michael Slater who put up 123 out of Australia's score of 184 vs England at Sydney in 1999 which makes up being 66.84% of the total.

Test cricket is a strange game and you see records being broken time and again with new benchmarks being set often. But this record by Charles Bannerman has still not been obliterated and he is still a proud man atop the perch.

If at all this record is peaked, it will come to end the longest standing record ever witnessed in test cricket history as it dates back to the very first official test match ever being played.