Pointless quotes beget pointless posts

Meaningless quote of the day:

"He has scored 16,000 runs. I haven't even played 16,000 balls."

- M S Dhoni, asked about Sachin Tendulkar not doing too well in the Commonwealth Series (before yesterday's match, of course)

First, the answer has absolutely nothing to do with the question. It's just another way of using past achievements to brush aside any talk about current form. Also, this peculiar interpretation of Authority: if cricketer A has 16,000 runs and cricketer B has 3,000 runs, the latter has only 3000/16000 x 100 = 18.75 per cent authority to comment on the former (even if the latter is the former's captain). This in turn leads to the misbegotten idea that someone who hasn't actually played cricket at the highest level has Zero per cent authority to make statements about Test-level players. (It applies to other fields too. As a reviewer I'm often asked things like: "What gives you the right to say mean things about Jodhaa Akbar when you've never even stood behind a camera, much less got Aishwarya and Hrithik to writhe together on a palace floor?")

But even looked at on its own terms, Dhoni's quote would have made sense only if his batting strike rate was something like 20 runs per 100 balls (which means he would have needed close to 16,000 balls to score the 3,000-odd ODI runs he currently has to his name). Going by his actual strike rate, if he had faced 16,000 balls, he would have scored close to 15,000 runs. So the difference between balls faced and runs scored isn't as large as the quote makes it sound. A more useful answer would have been, "He has scored 16,000 runs. I haven't even eaten 6,000 omelettes."

Sorry, it's one of those Monday mornings...