Sunday, October 6th 2013. Mumbai Indian’s have just beaten Rajasthan Royals by 33 runs to be crowned the champions of Champions league t-20 for the second time with contributions from Glenn Maxwell with the bat and Harbhajan Singh with the ball. But this game is likely to be remembered as a fitting swansong for two of India’s greatest batsmen ever – Rahul Dravid and Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Even though there were some speculations regarding Tendulkar’s retirement in the media, who, for a month or so kept on quoting BCCI as the sole reason behind that here-say - I refused to believe to the fact that I would have to see another cricket match featuring India without the great man not wearing blue colors so soon. But my doubts were cleared soon after when fellow Indian players – Rohit Sharma and Harbhajan Singh – paid their respective tributes to both these legends for the contributions they have made not only to Indian cricket but also to world sport in general.
We may get another Dravid or a Laxman but I doubt it whether we will get a Tendulkar again. He was and still is the most perfect batsman one has ever seen – the best in terms of technique, temperament and sheer natural talent. His balance is unbelievable, his back lift is straight, he could play any shot in the book either of front or back foot and he has that unique ability to hit the good balls for boundaries and sixes – The ability that separates the good from the great, the men from the boys. The Sight of the straight line of his bat coming down with the makers name imprinted. The brutal power of that back foot punch. The beauty, the elegance and the simplicity of the "mid-wicket flick". Tendulkar is a product of his generation - mixing caution with aggression combined with the kind of shrewd batsman-ship and technicalities makes him the undisputed champion of batting especially since the Bradman Era.
Tendulkar began his career in 1989 against Pakistan, (which I guess is known to every kid) and he scored his first hundred against England in Manchester in 1990 – an innings which helped the Indian’s to draw the test match. Later on in 1992 he got 112 and 148 in Perth and Sydney respectively – two innings which caused Australian bowler Merv Hughes say to his captain Allan Border -“This little prick is gonna get more runs than you AB”.
There was no doubt about his natural talent – he was a child prodigy without a doubt - but for me Sachin’s longevity was really hinted early on in Eden park, Auckland in a one day international game played against New Zealand in 1994 – the first time ever Sachin Tendulkar opened in an international game. He scored 84 off 49 balls and took the Kiwi’s bowlers to the cleaners on a seaming wicket, the same wicket where India’s bowlers folded their batsmen for a mere 140 ode all out. Legendary New Zealand players like Martin Crowe and Richard Hadley etc hailed that as one of the greatest knocks they have ever seen played by such a young player - who believe it or not - has only just started his career.
Throughout the 90’s, Sachin shouldered the crux of the Indian batting unit literally all on his own and the tactics for the oppositions was always simple and straight forward – Get Sachin Out and Beat India easily or else Lose and succumb to the fact he’s better than the 21 players who took the field.
The fact that he overshadowed his contemporaries by a long way, not only had a negative impact on the confidence on the fellow players but also resulted in some of his best knocks ending up on a losing cause rather than on a winning one.
If you take some of Tendulkar’s best knocks in ODI’s, you can see that the result was an Indian defeat by 10, 15 runs rather than a massive win. He scored a hundred against Srilanka in the 96 world cup, India lose. He got a terrific 130 ode against Pakistan in Chennai battling against all adversities, including a severe back injury – there also India lost the match. His heroic knocks in Ravalpindi and Hyderabad against Pakistan and Australia respectively also ended up in a losing cause even his 100th hundred resulted in India’s defeat against B’desh and that I guess, sparked a myth that whenever Tendulkar gets a hundred on a big occasion – India tend to lose the match more often than not.
A portion of the cricket loving demography gets carried away by the results and says Sachin is no great match winner – while rarely looking at the bigger picture. Of all his 100 international centuries, Sachin has seen Indian home on 53 occasions, while 25 of them were lost and 22 were drawn. People talk about 100 hundred’s being great but very few have actually realized this truth of Sachin – the fact that he is a great player not only talent vise but also statistics vise because * Lets face it * It’s a kind of Statistics which, I think, would even make Geoffrey Boycott’s grandmother proud.
Another statistics that sets Tendulkar apart, from his contemporaries, are his away performances. 29 off his 51 test hundreds came away from home which is 57% compared to Lara’s 17 out of 34 which is 50% and Ponting 15 out of 41 which is a mere 37%. Sure Lara’s and Ponting’s hundred’s would have resulted in a win, more than Tendulkar’s but that is more so because both of them had a team full of terrific fast bowlers – which India never had the privilege of until a certain Mr. Zaheer Khan was at his prime from 2009-11. Remember its bowler’s who wins you test matches not batsmen. Batsmen could only set the match up.
Like another little master Sunil Gavaskar who played at his best against the great West Indian bowling legends, Sachin also performed at his peak when played against Australia, a team which was regarded by many as the best since the era of the Caribbean giants. His average against the Aussies is a whopping 55 in tests and 46.3 in ODI’s which is second only to VVS Laxman, who, I have to say, was the quintessential Aussie-loving batsman in any cricketing squad. Tendulkar played McGrath extremely well, even though the latter had the better of him in world cups. But what was even more impressive is the way he handled Shane Warne during that infamous 1998-99 series back in India, a series which was unofficially titled as the “Sachin vs Warnie” series.
Warne had the better of Tendulkar in the first test, got him out for a duck in his hometown Mumbai. He even got Tendulkar out in the first innings of the second test in Chennai for a mere 4, but in the second innings it was different a show and I, including all the others who saw that test match, was privileged to witness something special/Divine. The M.A. Chidambaram stadium pitch was turning square from day 2 onwards and Tendulkar kept on slog sweeping Warnie over midwicket every time he came around the wicket and turned it a mile from leg to off.! What was amazing is that the over before that Shane Warne got VVS Laxman out bowled on the same bowl and the batsman playing the same shot. To me this was the ultimate and/or quintessential Tendulkar moment, which just defined everything about the man. His success belongs to his longevity - not just the natural talent he had but what he did with that talent.
I don't know what’s gonna happen to Indian Cricket from here on in. We may get better, we may become worse. We may improve our away performances or we might just remain to be "flat track bullies". But I know one thing for sure. **There was and still is - only one player whom I adored so much in cricket and that player is SACHIN TENDULKAR. The player who brought in divinity and Idol worship to a game which was legendary, mostly for glamor, money and corruption. Now how often do we even get one of those.?
LIVE LONG SACHIN RAMESH TENDULKAR.! LIVE LONG!*