AGENDA | Sunday, November 22, 2009 | Email | Print | 
His band of brothers
Great individuals need great contexts. Sachin Tendulkar got his only post-2001, writes Ashok Malik, when Indian cricket began to give him the team and work ethic he deserved
Sometimes the appraisal of the appraisal is more telling than the appraisal itself. In a sense, more than an assessment of Sachin Tendulkar’s 20-year career, the trajectory and design of the praise showered on him in the past fortnight is educative and revealing. It gives us an early glimpse of how history will see Sachin.
Most people who have applauded or written in honour of Sachin this month have referred to one or both of two sets of memories:
First, they have recalled his teenage years: the young schoolboy who was hit by Waqar Younis in his first series but heroically batted on; the imperious tyro who smashed Abdul Qadir for four sixes in an over; the dazzling 18-year-old who hit an epic century at Perth in 1992, on the world’s fastest pitch, against the world’s most lethal pace attack.
Second, they have been astonished by his consistency in, roughly, the 21st century and in the years after he turned 30 (in 2003). Far from slowing down, Sachin seems to have pressed the accelerator and has enjoyed astounding success in both test and limited overs cricket in the past few years.
What’s missing here? Frankly, almost all of the 1990s! Sachin scored thousands of runs in this decade but somehow his fans, thoughtful cricket chroniclers and perhaps even the historians of the future would not seem too interested. Aside from two magical centuries against Australia in Sharjah in 1998, nobody — none of those who wrote and spoke of his two-decade career — seemed to have time for even one innings between 1992 and the end of the millennium.
This was strange. In the 1996 world cup, for instance, Sachin was the highest run scorer. In the early 1990s, India won numerous test matches at home and Sachin hit lots of hundreds. So why is that aspect of Sachin’s career eclipsed?
The reason is simple: Indians aren’t awfully proud of what their cricket team achieved in the 1990s. The 1996 world cup, despite Sachin’s big scoring, led to a humiliating ouster in the semi-final, when a wild Kolkata crowd couldn’t take the fact that Sri Lanka was close to drubbing the hosts and interrupted play. The home wins in the early 1990s were unprepossessing — a combination of pitches custom-tailored for Indian spinners and anodyne strategies devised by manager Ajit Wadekar and captain Mohammed Azharuddin.
Despite Sachin, the Indian team was scarcely a world beater at that point, far from being among the very best. The decade concluded with the monumental match-fixing scandal, exposing some of those smug chaps who made up the Indian team as crooks.
Then, in 2001, something changed. In the Kolkata test against Australia, India fought back from the ropes; VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid hit centuries while following on, and took India to an improbable, impossible victory. In the next Test, Sachin hit a majestic hundred and propelled India to a series win against the world’s best team.
Two years later, India made it to the Fifty50 World Cup final. The most iconic moment of the tournament came when Sachin hit Shoaib Akhtar for a massive six over third man. It was a shot Indian cricket can never forget — retribution almost for Javed Miandad’s last ball six in Sharjah in 1986.
From then on, the Sachin legend only grows. He makes centuries as India win matches and series in every country. Okay, they only draw a series in Australia, but after the little man scores a marathon 241 not out and works his way back into form after a temporary blip.
He hits a big century in Multan and escorts Virender Sehwag to a triple hundred as India breach the final frontier and finally win a test match in Pakistan. He plays sublime cricket and chaperones a much younger team to triumph in a F50 tournament in Australia at the culmination of an emotionally exhausting tour. The story just goes on … Even the 175 in Hyderabad on November 5 is only a milestone, not journey’s end.
So what happened in 2001 and why did it trigger such a radical change from the 1990s? That year, under the leadership of Saurav Ganguly and the tutelage of John Wright, India finally began to put together the team and the work ethic that could complement Sachin. In the 1990s, there were too many street-smart mediocrities — the Ajay Jadeja-Manoj Prabhakar type — just hanging around. Sachin deserved better. He got it as a sort of 30th birthday gift.
Great individuals often need, and sometimes build or summon, great contexts. Bradman played for 20 years but his abiding legacy is still the fact that he led the Invincibles, the Team of 1948 that is perhaps the greatest Australian team of all time. Fittingly, Sachin has been the fulcrum of Indian cricket’s greatest generation — five good men, Tendulkar and Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman, and Anil Kumble. This was a Band of Brothers like no other. They rescued Indian cricket from the swamp of shame, renewed its spirit, taught it how it win — everywhere, in all conditions.
That final attribute must be given its due. Indians remember Sunil Gavaskar as an artiste and a warrior, but almost always as a crusader for the lost cause, for the failed fourth-innings chase. People like their sports heroes for their achievements and their grit — they like them most when they win. Gavaskar rarely had the team that allowed him to win, that matched his template.
A dozen years after he made his debut, Sachin got lucky. The fact that his recent career has been so linked to team victories — many but not all with substantial contributions from the man himself — has made Tendulkar’s 20th anniversary as an international cricketer a bigger event and a larger celebration than otherwise.
In terms of his craftsmanship, this period has allowed him to flourish because he is no longer the team’s lone gunfighter, no more carrying its burden. As the Indian top order acquired meat and rigour, Sachin stopped being the equivalent of a stock bowler and reverted to being shock bowler. The world’s greatest teenage batsman now became the world’s great batsman over 30 or, as it happens, over 35.
That is why, years from now, when we are old and grey, when our powers of recall have begun to fade, when our bones creak and our souls tremble, when we await the call from the great pavilion in the sky, we won’t close our eyes and think of only Sachin. We will remember the titans.
Email | Print | Rate:
|