17th January, 2010, the day when the first Test of a 2-Test series between India and Bangladesh was to begin, started with Sehwag, the stand-in Indian skipper, calling Bangladesh “an ordinary Test side incapable of taking 20 Indian test wickets”. And for the first hour, it looked like his batting was where his mouth was earlier. But the session after lunch had a different story to tell. Sehwag played a slightly short ball in the air and was snapped up at short extra cover. Gambhir edged a delivery that that was pitched short and sat up a little, but one that he should have left alone. Dravid played all over a yorker while trying to work it on the on-side and was bowled comprehensively. Laxman danced down the wicket and tried to flick the ball but was beaten by the flight, got an inside edge on to the pads that went to the wicket-keeper who stumped him. Yuvaraj tried to loft one over the ropes but only managed to lob it straight into the hands of the fielder at mid-on. Karthik played one away from the body before getting his eye in and ended up giving a sharp catch to gully. From 79 for no loss, Team India was reduced to 150 for six, in under 26 overs.
While all this was happening, Tendulkar held up one end and hopes of a spirited Indian fightback. But while the above six batsmen were almost casual in their approach, Tendulkar went to the other extreme and played overcautiously. It almost seemed as if he was consumed with the thought that “Doesn’t matter if I am stranded in my 80s and doesn’t matter if India ends up with a paltry total, but I will not get out”. “Safety of my wicket at all costs” seemed to be his mantra. In the process, he made the Bangladeshi bowling attack look menacing, which it isn’t by any stretch of imagination. And there were no demons hiding in the pitch either. If batsmen showed the willingness, they could bat fairly easily. Tendulkar increased his speed of getting runs eventually. He scored 29 of the 30 runs scored on the morning of the second day’s play, and got to his 44th Test hundred. But Team India ended with a rather “ordinary” 243 in the first innings. And for this to have happened in the first Test match that India is playing after being crowned the “No. 1 side in Tests” is a terrific irony!
“Tendulkar batted sensibly and at least saved India the blushes”, most people would say and are saying. But I have a different take on the situation. “What’s the big deal if a sharp sword slices through an apple?” I say. Without any intention of belittling Tendulkar’s effort, I would like to humbly point out that he is “Sachin Tendulkar”, the man who has broken every imaginable batting record! He is certainly good enough to score a “sensible hundred” against Bangladesh while wickets were falling around him. But I believe that he is capable of a lot more than that. He could have taken the attack to the Bangladeshi bowlers and blasted a quick-fire hundred, and then stretched it into a big one and taken Team India past 300 or even 350 if he wanted to, but he chose not to. But then again, he has been deliberately choosing to play in a subdued fashion for a long time now.
But was he always like this? If you have watched Tendulkar over the years, you would know that the answer to that question is a resounding NO. He wasn’t like this at all! In his debut series against Pakistan, when he was not even a 16-year-old, Waqar Younis hit him on the nose and drew blood, literally. Tendulkar received on-field treatment and them smacked Waqar for two fours in the very same over! Tendulkar was a very aggressive, attacking batsman in Tests. Just look at some of his old innings anew if you don’t believe me. His aggression then, and the significant reduction in it now, will be as clear as daylight. And I just can’t forget the days when he started opening in ODIs after a rather unsuccessful stint in the middle order. He used to come and fire rockets from his bat all over the wagonwheel, through the wide open gaps in the field while the fielding restrictions were still on. But it was all new to him. So he would get carried away more often than not, and get out after a quickfire 30 or 40, with the run rate comfortably over 6, and closer to 7 or 8 on many occasions. That was new to all of us as well since a score of say 35 for one after 10 overs was quite common and in fact considered “quite good” in the pre-Tendulkar era.
I am privy to some inside information through a confidential source, who told me that Tendulkar “asked” for the job of opener in ODIs from the team management. “I like it when the ball comes on to my bat. That is when I can play my natural game and play shots freely. And as it happens, there are gaps galore in the first 15 overs,” he must have argued. So that’s how he got the job, and that’s how he came to be the batsman who struck terror in the hearts of opposition bowlers, even if it was for a brief 7 or 8 overs during those early days.
But soon enough, people stopped being happy with his quickfire 30 or 40 in ODIs and a not-so-stellar average in Tests, and started asking, “Why can’t you bat longer and get a hundred? After all, what good is your brisk innings if it doesn’t lead to bigger innings and, the most important thing of all, victories? After he once got out to a rash shot and when he was asked about it later by a journalist, he replied, “It looks like a rash shot now because I got out. But if that ball had got to the boundary rope like a bullet, you would have clapped right?” What he meant was that the decision to preemptively attack the opposition is like a double-edged sword; sometimes, the attacker is the one who’s left bleeding. But instead of acknowledging that as part and parcel of the strategy to attack, and that at the end of the day, cricket is “just a game”, Tendulkar was rapped on the knuckles! “Don’t you go saying something stupid like that,” he was admonished, although maybe not in so many words.
So he took it to heart, as much as a mortal being can. He stopped uttering anything even remotely as “stupid” as that. And more importantly, he curbed his “natural instincts” in favour of caution, longevity of innings, and more hundreds and runs in the bag, for himself as well as for Team India. And the result is there for everybody to see. He is the safest, most consistent run making machine that has ever walked onto a cricket field without a shadow of doubt! 44 hundreds, 13,000+ runs in Test cricket and counting. 45 hundreds, 17,000+ runs in ODIs and counting. My confidential source told me that more than 15 years ago, Sunil Gavaskar told Tendulkar, “Tendlya, there are a few good bowlers around today, but they aren’t half as menacing as Garner, Marshall, Holding, Roberts, Lillie, and the likes. And that is why you have to get at least 50 international hundreds! Only then will I be able to say that you lived up to your potential.” Well, Tendulkar scored a Gavaskar’s career worth of international centuries more than Gavaskar’s fairly high expectations of him! You have to read the previous sentence again to appreciate what Tendulkar has “achieved” in his life.
But Tendulkar’s cricketing idol is none other than Sir Vivian Richards, and therein lies the irony. In the process of fulfilling his own, Gavaskar’s, and the entire nation’s expectations of himself, Tendulkar has become the complete antithesis of the player that he idolizes! If Richards would have watched Tendulkar’s batting yesterday, I daresay he would have wept uncontrollably, for the one thing that Richards symbolized was his trademark swagger! He never compromised the way he batted, no matter what the circumstances or the consequences if he got out. Lest you have forgotten, he played in his “usual” style in the 1983 World Cup final as well, and if Kapil Dev hadn’t pulled off that stunner, India would never have won their only World Cup. Chewing gum perennially, which was another one of his trademarks, he batted with only one aim: to not just score heaps of runs but to utterly dominate the bowlers and demoralize them. On days that he got the better of the bowlers, he would punch his hand in the air. And on days that the bowlers got the better of him, he would walk back to the pavilion, spit the chewing gum from his mouth, and hit it out of the way with his bat before it hit the ground, as if to say, “You got me this time punk. But beware the next time I come out to bat! It’s going to be a bloody affair.” And more often than not, it would be a bloody affair. But I will always remember Sir Vivian Richards for what I once heard him say in an interview. He said, “I have never worn a helmet, and I never will. The day I feel that I ‘need’ a helmet, will be the last day I play cricket.” I was floored to say the least! No wonder they call him “King Richards”. He really was the “King of the Jungle”.
I am guessing that in his younger days, Tendulkar must have idolized Sir Vivian Richards as the player that he wanted to become. And to be fair to Tendulkar, he could have. But most Indians didn’t want a “Richards”; they wanted a “Tendulkar”, one word for “a safe, consistent, run-making machine”. To their wishes, Tendulkar said “sar aakhon par” or “your wish is my command”, killed the Richards in him, and gave them a “Tendulkar” instead. You get what you ask for!
P.S: To Dear Tendlya, You now have 89 international hundreds and 30,000+ international runs! What do you have to lose now yaar? Enough of this safety, wafety. Why not bat like your idol for the remainder of your career at least? Kaay mhantos?
Prashant Karhade (the_one@prashantkarhade.com)
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