Celebrating 50 years of Music and Maestro

This day 14th May 2026 marks 50 years since the introduction of Isaignani Ilaiyaraaja in the annals of mainstream music. It was on this special date etched in time on 14th May 1976 that witnessed the official arrival of Maestro to the world of music and what a remarkable journey it has been spanning a milestone of 5 glorious decades.

To take a medium like music and create such an everlasting impact lasting half a century is simply mind boggling. Years, generations, centuries and eras may pass but I'm sure the music will live on for eternity. Grateful for all the wonderful musical creations and enriching our lives in ways more than we can ever imagine.

For any kind of situation, mood, feeling, emotion or theme an Ilaiyaraaja number always comes in handy. I don't believe in hero worship but I worship music and Isaignani Ilaiyaraaja is truly one of its greatest custodians. A genuine byword when it comes to music and extremely blessed to have been a recipient of all the majestic music unleashed from his eximious oeuvre. Celebrating 50 years of the man, the Maestro and the magic of music on this historic landmark golden jubilee day.

A Century is not a Half Century - Googly Fact on recording a cricket metric!

This is an interesting fact which many don't know or realise. Whenever a batsman records a century, it no more gets accounted as a fifty in the statistics metrics of a player. This is because when accounting the stats for a batsman, there are two different metrics - 50′s and 100′s and scoring a hundred doesn't mean it'll get recorded as both a half century and a century. Thus, it means when a hundredth run is touched during an innings, the stat of it also being a 50 gets obliterated.

The only catch you need to know is if a person scores the fastest 50 and in the process goes on to get a century, he will hold the record for the fastest fifty but it won't be considered as a half century in the individual statistics of the player concerned. Classic case is AB DeVillers who scored a mind boggling 149 off 44 balls against the Windies where he blitzed away to both the fastest 50 off just 16 balls and also the fastest 100 off just 31 deliveries. Now, he does hold the record for both fastest 50 and fastest 100 in ODI's but what if i tell you that it never got recorded as a fifty in his stats. Quite perplexing, right?

The same thing does not hold good when you score a double hundred or triple hundred. These will still be accounted as a hundred. The reason is, if you see the border line stats of any player, only 2 metrics will be mentioned viz 50′s and 100′s. There is no column for number of 150's/200's/300's etc. So in case you need to know the total number of times a batsman has crossed 50, you need to add both the number listed under number of 50′s as well as those under number of 100′s.

Just to make the whole thing clear and lucid, let's see Virat Kohli’s test stats as of current status (End of home Sri Lanka test series 2017)
 No. of 50's scored - 15
 No. of 100's scored - 20
 No. of 200's scored - 6
If you want to know the number of times Virat has scored over 50 in an innings, it's 35 times (15+20) but the total number of times he has crossed 100 is 20 only. The six times he has gone beyond 200 happens to be within this tally of 20 only.

Thus, in a nutshell what you need to remember is 'A century is not a half century but a double century or triple century is counted as a century along with being a double or triple hundred as the case may be in the individual record books of a cricketer.