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[kban1]

The Master Moments

From nervous child prodigy to one of the sport’s most accomplished players, we look back at 20 years of Sachin Tendulkar

Dileep Premachandran


Itzhak Perlman, the violin virtuoso who took his first bow at Carnegie Hall as an 18-year-old, once said: “For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.” After Sachin Tendulkar’s first Test match in Karachi 20 years ago produced just 15 runs and five wicketless overs for 25, hardened cynics might have questioned the wisdom of thrusting a 16-year-old on to such a stage.

A week later, in Faisalabad, there was nowhere to hide. When Tendulkar arrived at the crease to join his Mumbai teammate, Sanjay Manjrekar, India were in disarray at 101 for 4. In a column many years later, Wasim Akram wrote: “It was a lush green wicket, possibly the greenest I’ve seen in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was batting on 20-odd when a ball from me hit him. I immediately asked him if he was alright and he looked me in the eye and nodded. I was a 21-year-old then, so I did not give the matter much thought, but in retrospect that score of 50-odd was the first hint the world got about Tendulkar’s special talent.”

For the world, it was a hint. For the boy himself, it was so much more. “My first innings was a disaster,” he said. “When I walked out at Faisalabad, I told myself that I would do my best to just stay at the wicket, even if I didn’t score runs.” He finished with 59, having stayed at the crease for a shade over 4 hours. And although it didn’t win the Test, or set the pulse racing, it meant a lot to someone thrown in at the deep end. “I said to myself, ‘You can handle this, it’s not a place where you don’t belong.’”

In one of its special issues, Time magazine had Tendulkar’s debut at No. 4 in its list of Top 10 Sporting Moments, behind Michael Jordan’s The Shot (against the Cleveland Cavaliers), Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose being banned from baseball and Arsenal winning the English league title in the last minute of the 1988-89 season. In the years to come, you can take it for granted that thousands will claim that they were at the National Stadium on 15 November when he walked out in an India cap for the first time. In retrospect, it was certainly an I-was-there moment, though few could have imagined that Tendulkar would still be punching the ball through the covers two decades later.

Perhaps we in India can’t really fathom the full extent of the adoration and expectation that he has had to deal with in that time. Matthew Hayden, another batting colossus of our age, gave voice to what many outsiders feel when he wrote: “His life seems to be a stillness in a frantic world and I admire his mental strength. When Tendulkar goes out to bat, it’s beyond chaos—it is a frantic appeal by a nation to one man.”

Some, like Muhammad Ali, protected themselves with a veneer of loudmouthed arrogance. Others, like George Best, lost themselves in a haze of boozy, womanizing nights. With Tendulkar, the humility, the feeling that he considered himself truly fortunate to be doing what he did, never went away, even if it cost him any semblance of a normal life. “I could say that I didn’t get to do all those things that a normal teenager would do,” he told me once, “but then again, not many people get the opportunity to do what I do.”

That awareness of the big picture was best illustrated in Steve Waugh’s final Test at SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) in January 2004. Twenty minutes before stumps, with Australia seemingly safe, Waugh—who had scripted a typically defiant 80 just when his team most needed it—swept a delivery from Anil Kumble to deep square leg, where Tendulkar wrapped his hands around it. As 40,000 Australians rose in unison, it took Tendulkar a moment to comprehend the significance of the occasion.

“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that I had a hand in Steve Waugh’s last dismissal,” he said later. “I was thinking of how we could pull off the win. But once I realized that it was his last innings, I ran all the way from the boundary to congratulate him. I said, ‘You’ve made every Australian proud, and every cricketer admires you’. That was about it really, nothing more.”

Just as Sunil Gavaskar was defined by his heroics against the all-conquering West Indies, so Tendulkar remains peerless because of the enormity of his achievements against Australia. Numbers matter in sport, but nothing counts quite as much as how you do against the best. With 10 Test centuries and eight one-day hundreds against the dominant team of his era, Tendulkar’s place in the pantheon is beyond dispute.

More than cold statistics though, it’s the moments that will endure long after he’s put his bat away for the last time. That final over in the Hero Cup semi-final. The audacious assault on Shane Warne in Chennai. The cold-eyed targeting of Shoaib Akhtar at Centurion, South Africa, in 2003. That match-winning century in Chennai, just a fortnight after the streets in the vicinity of his restaurant in Mumbai had resembled war-torn Beirut.

And most of all, Perth in February 1992. That magical 114 on a lightning-fast pitch, even as the team was routed by 300 runs. Watching the teenager stand on tiptoe and cut and drive with the panache of an old pro in baggy green, Merv Hughes, he of the walrus moustache and the colourful sledges, turned to Allan Border and said, “This little ***** is going to get more runs than you, AB.” He was right.

Dileep Premachandran is associate editor of Cricinfo and Asian cricket correspondent for The Sunday Times and The Guardian.

http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/11/05193608/The-master-moments.html

[kban1]

Sachin's mind is still strong

More than a decade after his exploits in Sharjah, Tendulkar has proved he still has the spirit of old

Ian Chappell

November 8, 2009

 
On a couple of balmy nights in Sharjah in 1998, Sachin Tendulkar carved out successive scintillating centuries against Australia to convince those of the men in gold who weren't believers that he was the best batsman in the world.

More than a decade later Tendulkar has converted a whole new set of Australian non-believers with a mercurial ODI century in Hyderabad. Well, that's actually not quite true. Ricky Ponting was in attendance in Sharjah, and for him Tendulkar just reconfirmed his great skill and tenacity.

As the opposing captain, Ponting was constantly plotting Tendulkar's downfall in Hyderabad, and it came in the nick of time to seal an Australian victory that for a time looked like it would be snatched away by one man. As the third, along with West Indies' champion Brian Lara, in what was a three-way battle for the batting crown, Ponting would've appreciated, if not welcomed, Tendulkar's mastery.

One of the more amazing things about Lara was his remarkable feat in recapturing the world record 10 years after he first established the high-water mark. Longevity isn't the hallmark of greatness but it's a requirement.

Not that Tendulkar needed another century to convince anyone of his prowess, but a masterful knock like the Hyderabad one was a timely reminder that he still has a few great innings left. That's the main difference between the Tendulkar of today and a decade ago.

In Sharjah he belted the Australian bowlers all over the park to get his team into the final, and then followed it up two days later with an equally dynamic showing to win the big prize. Now the hard part will be reprising his starring role in Guwahati when his body is still recovering from Hyderabad.

Tendulkar did prove one thing in Hyderabad: the mind is still willing. He displayed the same fighting spirit that was evident in Sharjah, the same desire to trump the opposition, and amazingly, his strike rate was better than in both of those 1998 gems. "I can't concentrate like I used to," I recall Greg Chappell saying near the end of his illustrious career. "I can still apply myself occasionally, but other days it's just a battle." And he was a strong-minded batsman.

Tendulkar is a strong-minded person but that isn't what defines his batting. His is more a mercurial attitude that allows him to sense the moment when to let loose his full array of shots and leave the bowlers clutching at straws. Straws that in his pomp were whisked away by a whirlwind of shots.

In recent times Tendulkar's batting has gained a mortal quality. He often has to battle and graft for runs, like a 40-average batsman. The fact that even in that mode he still churns out centuries, like a press printing 10-rupee notes, is a testament to his greatness. However, occasionally all the magic returns and on that day he can light up a cricket ground, the way he did in Hyderabad. The cover drive flows, the flick off the pads races to the boundary and the short-of-a-length delivery is punched off the back foot, while fieldsmen are left grasping at fresh air.

In batting maturity Tendulkar resorts to more deft deflections and little glides to third man but they are as much about resting tiring muscles at the non-striker's end as any concession to the bowlers' ability. He's also moved with the times and is now more likely to upper-cut a short-pitched delivery rather than employ the hook shot. He even indulges in the premeditated shovel shot over the short fine-leg fielder's head. It was one of those that ended his epic innings in Hyderabad, just short of him achieving deity and a thrilling Indian victory.

There will be nit-pickers who say, "There he goes again. Tendulkar succeeds but India fails to claim victory. That's the difference between him and Lara." The difference appears to be that Lara had a ruthless streak when it came to winning the match, while for Tendulkar one more risk is never too many.

To me the only disappointment is that 11 years after Sharjah, the Indian batting is still so heavily dependent on Tendulkar. After all his magical displays you'd think some of the next-generation batsmen would be clamouring to imitate Tendulkar's starring roles rather than being content to play the bit part in the shadow of the little master.

http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/433347.html

[dhruvdeepak]

probably one of the best ODI knocks ever. fitting that the best ODI batsman ever holds that tag. dhoni has chased 300 and made 183*....however sachin's knock trumped it.

that coventry bloke hit 194 in a losing cause, but that was batting first.