“Tendulkar was India’s first player to be held in awe by other sides – and even feared”
Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement in 2013 marked the end of an era in Indian cricket. His career – and his colossal impact on the game in his homeland – was assessed in the 2014 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
Every Indian fan – and many a non-Indian – has in his head a personal montage of Sachin Tendulkar, the finest sportsman produced by India and, arguably (but not contentiously so), cricket’s most complete batsman. This is not to say he was better than Donald Bradman. But Bradman played in an era when there were immensely fewer demands on a cricketer’s time, body and mind. And, over a 24-year career, Tendulkar played 200 Tests at 59 different grounds, plus 463 one-day internationals at 96.
Bradman’s 52 Tests took place at only ten venues, all in Australia or England, allowing him a cosy familiarity with conditions that Tendulkar – except at a few marquee venues in India – never enjoyed. Add to that the pressure of a fanatical, sometimes insane, nation, and one cannot be denied at least this observation: cricket and country asked more of Tendulkar than they ever did of Bradman, or of anyone else.
But back to the montage. My own has five images. The first is from November 1989 when, as a 16-year-old who looked rather younger, Tendulkar was about to make his Test debut, in Karachi. He is flanked in a winsome photograph by Kapil Dev and Mohammad Azharuddin. The veterans are smiling their trademark smiles – Kapil’s manly and toothy, Azhar’s reliably goofy – and each has a proprietary arm draped around Tendulkar’s shoulders.
They are proud of their ward, who regards the camera almost bashfully, his hair a lush mop of black curls. A boy among men he was, his callow face yet to be bloodied by a Waqar Younis bouncer; even as he grew older, a vital part of him stayed boyish. It’s possible his countrymen kept him from full manhood, their worship freezing him in time.
At the spectrum’s less rarefied end, Michael Vaughan has dined out on the off-break that once sneaked through Tendulkar in a Test in Nottingham; it was the man who mattered, as much as the delivery. Despite this, his retirement does not leave Indian cricket noticeably weaker. After all, the batting line-up had been carrying him for two years, the result of Tendulkar being allowed to choose the time of his own retirement. He played on for 23 Tests after the 2011 World Cup final, averaging a downright un-Tendulkarish 32, as against nearly 57 until then. Just as tellingly, he became more susceptible to the straight ball: in that final phase, he was either bowled or lbw in 49% of his innings; until then, the figure had been 34%.
But what Indian cricket – or, more specifically, Indian batting – now has is a fearlessness that was missing in the BT years. Self-belief is Tendulkar’s greatest bequest to his country’s cricket. To everyone else he gave something of equal consequence: joy, and pleasure – the pleasure that comes from watching a simple, unaffected man perform beautiful feats with the bat, year after year after year.
First published in 2014
