Sachin Tendulkar,
after 23 years has decided to call it quits from one day internationals.
All good things must come to an end they say. This good thing had
lasted so beautifully for so long that one did not want this to end. And
now it has ended, to leave behind a void which can never be filled.
Because this is the
man who defined what one day cricket is. He showed just how exciting it
can be instead of the tag of pyjama cricket which was heaped on it by
the purists. Before his arrival on the scene, Indian batsmen were called
as dull dogs, who could never play aggressively. There used to be a
time when all the Indian one day team combined did not have half of
Desmond Haynes centuries. SRT changed this and in less than eight years
after his debut, he broke Haynes record for most number of ODI
centuries, inspite of reaching the three figure match only after 79 matches. If this isn’t phenomenal, what is?
His beginning in ODIs
was far from promising, with him failing to score in his first two
innings. Even after that, he mostly batted down the order at 5 or 6, and
inspite of that making a great impact. He was promoted to open the
innings against NZ in 1994. He scored 82 off 49 deliveries.The rest as
they say, is history. He became the premier batsman in the Indian team
in all formats of the game in no time at all. By 1998, he was already
the best batsman in the game.
Whenever Tendulkar
came down to bat, it was no less than a hero making an entry in his
blockbuster. When he batted, it was India that was batting. The silence
during his walk back to the pavilion whenever he got out was deafening.
But when he clicked, nothing could stop him and he ruined
the statistics of many bowlers , even ending the careers of some. Mike
Kasparowicz, one of them famously said “I’m sick of that m********”.
Now most of his
critics who have been calling for his head all the times, always said
that he never played in crisis situations, conveniently forget that when
it came to his role in the Indian team, every innings was a crisis
innings. For more than half of his career, he played the
role of both accumulator and speedy scorer, and it was his wicket that
the opposition wanted the most. Anyone who watched cricket in the 1990s
and early 2000s would remember that whenever his wicket fell, the
opposing team celebrated as if they had won more than half the match.
And it used to be that way.
He has been accused of
not playing a big role in the wins of the team, like his counterparts
Brian Lara or Ricky Ponting. This again is being very unfair to the
great man. Its the bowlers who win matches, not batsmen, and no batsman
can save a match if the team has bowlers who gift away runs like
toffees. Batsmen are bound to fail 8 out of 10 times, whether in test or
one day matches.Ponting had the assurance that no matter
what went wrong, McGrath and Warne will be there to make amends(so was
Bevan, erroneously rated next to Tendulkar by some Aussies due to his
high average, a result of sheer number of not out innings owing to his
coming at No5). Lara’s life was made easy a lot by Walsh and Ambrose,
those two peerless gems of fast bowling. So was the life
of Inzamam by Wasim and Waqar, so that his embarrassing run outs were
drowned by their brilliant bowling. It will be interesting to the fans
of Ponting to see his record in the subcontinent, given that SRT has
scored runs all over, and remains the highest scorer in all formats of
the game against Australia and South Africa, in addition to the rest.
Did Indian team ever
have any reliable bowlers like this? Who could Tendulkar look back on in
case he failed? Nobody worth mentioning other than Anil Kumble. Add to the pathetic fielding of the Indian team in the 1990s where catches
being dropped at slips , point or gullies were painfully common
(Javagal Srinath could have got 350+ wickets in any good test team. He
ended up with just 236 due to the aforementioned reasons) .Take SRT out
of the Indian team of the 1990s and it wouldnt look a lot different than
Bangladesh team of today. He spent half of his career making a mediocre
team look competent, shielding the incompetent middle order (Sourav
Ganguly and Rahul Dravid arrived much later, in late 1996, and the
latter took a lot of time settling down in the ODI team) and being the
sole dependable batsman the team could look upto. If this is not
handling pressure, then what is?
Inspite of all the
stereotypes, it is SRT who has won the most number of matches while
chasing the target (54. The next in the line are kallis 53 and Ponting
46). With the exception of 1999 World Cup, he has been the leading or
the second highest run scorer in all the other five editions that he
has played. India couldn’t have reached the semifinals in 1996 or finals
in 2003 and 2012 without him. For the only player who has scored 18000+
runs, his strike rate of close to 86 is unbelievable. His failure rate
is the lowest among all Indian batsmen, inspite of him having played the
most number of matches than anyone (463). Right from the time he opened
the innings in 1994, he has changed the way one day cricket is played.
People are quick to say how Viv Richards was better, but they forget
that Tendulkars career has been twice as long as any batting great in
cricket. Can anyone imagine a player today who starts at the age of 16,
to play for more than two decades, not only as a part of the team but
being the best batsman all that while, fighting career threatening
injuries not once but thrice and still emerge the winner at the end?
Indeed he was the
biggest impact maker in one day cricket more than anyone. Right from
giving Shane Warne nightmares, to ending the careers of Wasim Akram and
Waqar Younis and the derailing of Shoaib Akhtar (which began his end) in
that unforgettable innings of 98 in Centurion, or the two unforgettable
innings in the finals of the Standard bank Series , two glorious
hundreds in the series win against Australia or any of his innings in
India’s WC matches that they won. The examples are more than enough to
remember and hence his baiters choose not to.
His career was not
without lows, his poor captaincy being the biggest of it. The other lows
were his extended lean phases in 1997, 2004-07. Add to that the three
career threatening injuries. But he emerged stronger from it all the
time. He was down and out after India’s exit in group stages in WC 2007.
Ian Chappel suggested him to look in the mirror and retire. But he came
back with a bang, having the most glorious period in the
next five years, which included many match winning innings, and a long
strings of 90s , incidentally for which he holds the record as well.
His retirement, though
sad , has come at the right time from ODIs. He ends out on a high, with
his last innings being a gutsy half century, but in all his last year’s
performances were not matching to his calibre. His value
in India’s ODI team is way beyond his 18000+ runs or 49 centuries. The
writer is not in awe of him due to him being the biggest run scorer but
due to the fact that this individual has brought excellence to such an
extent in his chosen profession that he has become the very face of it.
It was this man who showed the Indian middle class to aspire to become
something more than cramming for medical and engineering seats. It was
him because of whom cricket started earning its millions and had its
millionaires, an unthinkable fact just two decades ago. In a world full
of influential figures drunk on their success, he remained a figure of
humility, someone who had the respect of all the competitors and even
the fans of the rival team, a peerless example for everyone to follow.
It will be so hard not to see his
name in the batting scorecard of Indian one day team, and it wont be
long before the name disappears from the test format . Cricket in India,
without SRT. We will have a hard time getting used to it.
Thanks a million Sachin , for the boundless joy you have given us for more than two decades. There wont be a better man in blue.
