We will talk about cricket, about two of the stars –the unwilling caption and the shy bowling wizard.

Have you guessed who they are? Of course they are Sachin Tendolkar and Anil Kumble. Why did Sachin not want to be captain of the Indian cricket team? Well, he’s been one already and then was replaced by Azharuddin. Being a caption is like being a class monitor. You are blamed when the class makes a noise. Os as in this case –when the team loses! It is responsibility all the way.

Now for some interesting facts- born in Mumbai on the 24th April 1973 Sachin played his first test match at Karachi-when he was only sixteen! And he was the youngest player, at 19, to score 1000 runs in test cricket (1992). Lovingly called the little, big hero -`little’ because he’s short, stocky and curly-haired, and `big’ because he plays like a giant1

He received the Birla Award and then the Arjuna award for sports in 1995 –when only 22. Two years later he was also awarded the Rajeev Gandhi Khel Ratna Award.

At the time of writing, Sachin has 21 centuries in international one day matches to his credit.

Now here’s what other crickets say of him. Azharuddin –his caption at the time –said he was Viv Richards, Mark Waugh and Brian Lara all rolled into one. He would score a century, field like a tiger and take wickets too if he were given a chance to bowl –a real `all-rounder’.

Australian caption, Steve Waugh, said he was easily the best batsman in the world –second only to Brad man! Hen the foreign media prepared a dream team; Sachin was the only Indian player to be included! He has not let all this make him proud. He I very level –headed balanced and dedicated.

Within 24 hours of his father’s funeral he was on his way to the world Cup (in England) because his side needed him.

And now for the second champ- Anil Kumble

Kumble is a tall, young man with a run as spring as an antelope’s bound. His long, bony fingers can easily spin a ball.

He is only the second bowler in 122 years to take all 10 wickets in an innings. His record spell -10 for 74 against Pakistan at the Firozeshah Kotla helped India to win the 2nd Test.

The only other person to have taken wickets in an innings was Jim Laker whose figures are 10 for 53.

After the last wicket was taken, kumble could not find the ball. He wanted to keep it as a memento. Well, luckily, his friend Venkatesh Prasad had it and gave it to Kumble.

He believes in the three D’s Determination, Discipline and dedication.

Minutes before flying to Sharjah for test he had the time and the concern to call up a young boy who was seriously ill and almost certain to die! It made the boy’s last happy.

They say he is a matador who looks like a chess player. (A matador is a bull fighter who usually moves quickly and is bold and adventurous – whereas he looks like a chess payer who usually is gentle, quiet and polite.)

There is something that one wants, but everyone gets without asking for it. Can you name it? It is pain. All of us wish with all our hearts that there was no such thing as pain in the world. People in pain will give everything they have o anyone who can help them to get rid their pain. This story is about a man whose work as helped millions of people and animals to escape a great deal of pain. He was a doctor and his name was James Simpson.

Simpson was born on 7 June 1811 at place called Bathgate in Scotland. His father was a baker. He encouraged James to go on with his studies instead of learning the family business. James’s progress at school was very quick. He was only fourteen years old, when he went up to the University of Edinburgh. He chose to study medicine and became a qualified doctor by the time he was twenty-one. It was part of Dr Simpson’s hospital duties to help other doctor during operations. On these occasions, he had to stand by watching while the patient screamed in unbearable pain. In those days, surgical operations were cruelly painful. Patients were tied to the operation table with strong straps to prevent them from struggling. They were given does of whisky to dull their as much as possible. But this did not help them very much. Often, when a patient cried out aloud in agony, the surgeon hurried the operation.

This was not a good thing to do. Operations should be done carefully, and surgeons should be able to give their whole attention to the task. But how could they do this when they were disturbed by heart –breaking cries?

`Is there nothing that will help patients feel no pain? Surgeons should be able to do operations carefully. They can’t do them well if the patients move and shout in pain.’ These were Dr Simpson’s thoughts as he stood by the operation table. `I must search for a pain-killer until I find one’, he thought. And the more operation he saw, the more determined he became.

Simpson had to carry out two kinds of tasks. First, he had to find a chemical that could lessen or kill pin when the operation took place. Then, he had to be sure that the pain-killer would not-kill the patient as well, or arm the patient’s health. But how could he make sure of this? He could not use his patients or other people in experiments. It might be dangerous. So he decided to experiment on himself, and on some friends of his who offered to help as volunteers.

One day, Simpson showed his friends a new chemical called chloroform. It was a liquid that gave off a kind of vapor, and had been bought from a chemist in Liverpool. Simpson gathered as much information as he could about this liquid. Then he decided to test it. He could about this liquid. Then he decided poured some of it into a glass. Then he and two of his friends began to inhale it, that is, they breathed in the vapor that rose from the glass.

When they had inhaled it for some time, the three men became unconscious. It was as if they were fast sleep. They saw nothing, heard nothing and felt nothing, not even the passing of time.

We do not know exactly how long the three friends stayed unconscious. It was Simpson who came to himself first. The chloroform had done him no harm at all and he was happy and excited about this. But he had to wait and see what happened to his friends, soon they too recovered one after the other, and they said that they felt quite well.

Now Simpson knew how to make operations completely painless. If a patent inhaled the right quantity of chloroform vapor before an operation, he knew nothing about what the surgeon was doing. Then, the surgeon could work on any part of the patient’s body without giving her or him any pain whatever. In other words, Simpson had discovered that chloroform was an `anesthetic’.

`Anesthetic’ is the doctor’s word for something that makes us knows nothing and feels nothing. There are `general’ anesthetic, and `local’ anesthetic. If a doctor gives us a general anesthetic, we fall into something like a deep sleep. Chloroform is a general anesthetic. General anesthetics are necessary only during bigger and more serious operations. To make smaller operations painless, doctors use local anesthetics.

When a local anesthetic is used in any particular part of the body, that part becomes and feels nothing, but the patient herself is awake and can see almost everything that happening.

When we go to dentists to have our teeth pulled out, they may inject a local anesthetic into our gums and then pull our teeth out. We will not feel pain, although we may feel the dentist tugging at the tooth. Teeth were not removed painlessly in Simpson’s days.

As we know, there were no good local anesthetics then. These were discovered much later. But just before Simpson found out what chloroform could do, some American doctors discovered another general anesthetic. This was ether. Medical scientists soon found that chloroform was better than ether as an anesthetic in many ways, later, they discovered even better anesthetics that either ether or chloroform.

Simpson and is friend successfully tested chloroform on 4 May 1847. But it did not bring relief to any patient till 1855. Most doctors refused to use it. They were very suspicious of this new drug. They said they did not know what injury it might do to their patients’ health. Many religious groups were also against the use of chloroform. They felt that5 god had good reasons for giving His craterous pain.

Simpson had to work hard to remove other doctor’s doubts from their minds, and to convince them that chloroform could be used quite safely.

For some time, Simpson tried in vain. Ten, in 1853, he got a rare opportunity to prove that he was right.

He had been made one of the queen’s doctor’s in the same year in which he tested chloroform on himself.

In 1853, Queen Victoria allowed the doctors to give her chloroform. One of the three royal surgeons gave it to her before an operation, and the queen later thanked Simpson. She said the drug had taken away the pain and congratulated him on his remarkable achievement. In 1866, Queen Victoria gave Simpson the title `Sir’.

After the queen’s operation, doctors began to use chloroform and ether during their operations. Anesthetics are now very common. Does anyone remember Simpson and the great work he did?

Perhaps not, but he lives every time a patient has an operation and feels no pain.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the cleverest men ever born in America.

He was born in 1705 in Massachusetts. Is parents had come to America from Northampton shire in England.

When Ben just a boy, he invented swimming flippers. He made oval fins of wood, and he wore them on his hands and feet. They did help him to swim faster.

When Ben was twelve he went to work for hi brother who was a printer. A few years later his brother started a newspaper. Ben wrote for it.

In a few years Ben moved to Philadelphia. There he started a printing works of his own and his own paper too, which he called `poor Richard’s Almanac’.

People all over the world read it.

Among other things Ben invented bifocals. These are glass with one lens on the top for seeing things far away and a on the bottom for seeing close up.

In Ben’s time, not much was known about electricity. He wondered if lighting could be electricity. He made a kite and put some metal wire on a string and then flew it in a thunderstorm.

This was a very dangerous thing to do. The metal caught the electricity from the lightning. Ben had solved one of nature’s oldest mysteries. He also found how to protect buildings from electricity and invented the lightning conductor.

Ben spent much of his life serving the country. He was an officer in the post office and brought about many changes to improve its service. Many of his methods are still used in the US post office.

The American colonies began to have trouble with their mother country Britain. Ben went there and tried to keep peace between the two countries. But when war broke out he was wholeheartedly on the American side. Although he was seventy years old he designed weapons and forts and helped George Washington to raise an army. He helped to write America’s Declaration of independence from Britain.

Ben served as the American ambassador in France. Later Ben helped to write US constitution.

Mount Everest is the highest mountain peak of the world. It stands in the Himalayas and on the border o Nepal and Tibet near India. It is named after Sir George Everest, a British Surveyor, who first discovered its location and height.

Many attempts to climb Everest were made by an umber of mountaineering bodies and their members. The first attempt goes back to 1922 when captains Bruce and Finch reached up to 28,000 feet. Later serious attempts were made in 1924, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938 and 1952, but these were not successful.

Going up the higher reaches of the mountains is a very difficult task. First, it is too cold and one has to wear heavy thick garments to avoid frostbite. Second, it is difficult to breathe because the air is thin, with less oxygen. Third, there is no regular path upwards. The mountaineers have to use strong ropes with hooks and dig holes with axes to climb the heights. Fourth, the surface of the rocks is slippery and very risky. Glaciers of ice very often slide down hundreds of feet taking the mountaineers with them. For these reasons many adventurous persons attempting to go up very high mountains have lost their lives.

In May 1953 John hunted an expedition to the Everest. Two members of this team, Edmund Hillary and tensing Norkay, reached the top. Tensing Norkay reached the top. Tensing and Hillary moved out of their tent after a night’s rest n the lonely snows. They crawled out at 6.30 in the early morning. Everest was jut little above them. They had pitched a camp about 28,000 feet high and hey had to climb the last on thousand feet to reach the top.

With the oxygen kit on their backs, they slowly moved up the snow –clad rocks.

They found the powdery surface of the snow very slippery and dangerous. Luckily the base of the snow was solid and Hillary was able to cut steps with is ice axe.

Tensing was moving ahead. Hillary noticed that Tensing’s speed had reduced considerably. The oxygen tube was blocked with ice. Hillary knew that Sherpas found it difficult to manage the oxygen kit. He cleaned the tube for Tensing, who again gained sufficient speed.

The team of two had to climb on all ours or some time.

By 11.30 AM they had reached the top. They carried Indian, Nepali, British and UN Flags to the top of the world. Tensing buried gifts or his gods. Hillary also placed a tiny cross in the snow.

The world was overjoyed when the news of the conquest of Everest was flashed on the radio.