Just say India win the toss and bat on Boxing Day. If Virender Sehwag receives half the strike, if he repeats his 1.19-runs-a-ball scoring rate of two years ago, when he batted through a day in Mumbai for 284, and if he doesn't get out, he will bring up his 500th run shortly before tea on the second afternoon, at 2.32pm to be exact. If he goes a little faster, as fast as in the Indore one-dayer last fortnight, the clock will say four minutes past mid-day when he crosses for run number 500. "Run" is a misnomer, actually: there'll be not much running, mostly a whole lot of standing and swatting, if Viru becomes Test history's first 500 man.
Four hundred is the record, set by Brian Lara in St John's. Curious to think, that's not so much more than Len Hutton's 364 in 1938, a mere 36-run rise in 73 years, a case of arrested evolution, an anomaly - now, a sitting duck in Wisden's books. Already Sehwag has blitzed the one-day record 16 days ago with his 219 in Indore. And he is the one who can repeat the same feat in test too. Making the Wisden book look a bit younger.
So will it be?
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