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Over the last four weeks, a very curious phenomenon was recorded by disbelieving career counsellors. They found that more children had said they wanted to be "orthopaedists" than known before, marking the highest percentage increase for any "dream profession" in India since 1974 (where the vocation "angry young man" was popular). Not surprising, for Indian superstars have long influenced not only career choices, but also knowledge of the human anatomy. If there ever was such an award, the Gray's Prize for Improving Knowledge of the Body would go to Sachin Tendulkar.

If this award had been there for a few years, then Sachin would have won this award more than once, surely back (pun intended?) in 1999. Such is the power of the Indian star, whatever field he may be in. Sometimes, I feel that Warholian theories of "15 minutes of fame" must also extend to body parts. But on reflection, I find that, like in life, some have more fame than others.

Cricket fans will be familiar, to the point of being extremely pally, with the likes of the hamstring and the groin. Some may even boast of more than a nodding acquaintance with the webbing (when, employing a "tennis" prefix as is fashionable, it can become the "Ivanisevic" webbing). The keenest may sneer at these and hold intimacy of the "rotator cuff" as a distinction between the pundit and the rest (whom he considers part of the crowd of hoodlums who're there for the bottle throwing). But it truely takes the star to popularise an anatomical adjunct to front page news.

You don't believe me? Oh, you're one of those who wants stats, I see. I'll give you one, Vitalstatistix. Google's Zeitgest reported a sudden increase in search results containing the word "tennis" in the last month. Only Maria Sharapova's Wimbledon crown in July motivated more numbers of Web searches this year (which gives the ITF something to think about - now they need cricketers to make tennis popular). Hardly anyone knows what the tennis elbow is (and I'm one of them), but it's become the in-thing, the prefix of choice. There may be nothing official about it, and it certainly has no feel-good factor associated with it, but it just caught on nevertheless.

Among past hall-of-famers has been the good old Sachin "back". Beckham's something too. How about Vajpayee's knee? Going back about 20 years, Amitabh (and Puneet) made the mid-riff popular, and any kid born in the 60s can still describe the technical differences between the spleen and the diaphragm. Poor Ricky Ponting has to come to India one Test early to get his thumb some footage for nobody gave it a damn in Hobart.

Ending as usual with a few dirty puns, this blog makes no bones about the fact that the print world merely makes hay while the pun shines. A column has to elbow its way among all competition in a 5-mile radius to tickle the funny bone, which cannot be done as a knee-jerk reaction. Armed to the teeth, it has to muscle its way into your eyeballs but will at the end, desist from being the proverbial kabaab-me.n-haDDi between the doctor and his patient.

This blogger sincerely apologises for making humorous mileage of other people's misfortunes, and wishes the celebrities and their specialists well. He knows how they really feel, having suffered a debilitating sporting injury to the right index finger playing Minesweeper, and merely wants to cheer them up