Tendulkar (and Ganguly and Dravid and laxman) represented the last generation for whom test cricket was the ultimate form of the game, and for whom belonging to a quality test side was a matter of deeply-felt conviction
As Sachin Tendulkar begins his final month as a test cricketer and the media circus begins its countdown to those two test matches against the West Indies in November, cricket aficionados will be left melancholic by memories that bookend a 24-year career.
First, they will recall Sachin’s teenage years: The young schoolboy who was hit by Waqar Younis in his first series but heroically batted on; the dazzling 18-year-old who reached an epic century at Perth in 1992, on the world’s fastest pitch, against the world’s most lethal pace attack. Second, they will marvel at his hunger and consistency in, roughly, the 21st century and in the years after he turned 30 (in 2003). Sachin enjoyed astounding success, in both test and limited overs cricket, right up to the Indian tour of Australia in early 2012.
What’s missing hereIJ 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, it is difficult to offhand recall even one innings between 1992 and the end of the millennium.
This would seem 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. In 1999, as Australia smashed India down under, Sachin was not just the last man standing but often the only man standing. So why is that aspect of Sachin’s career eclipsedIJ
The reason is simple: Indians weren’t awfully proud of their cricket team back then. 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, far from being among the very best. The decade concluded, of course, with the monumental match-fixing scandal.
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 World Cup final. The iconic moment of the tournament came when Sachin hit Shoaib Akthar 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 grows and grows. He makes centuries as India wins matches and series in every country. Okay, they only draw a series in Australia (2003), as 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 (2004) 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 limited-overs tournament in Australia at the culmination of an emotionally exhausting tour in 2008.
India comes to a stop to watch him hit a pulsating 175 against Australia in Hyderabad (2009) as his team loses a one-day game that becomes a one-man show. He hits 200 in a 50-over contest (2010). His form carries India to a World Cup victory (2011). In two otherwise humiliating test series (England 2011 and Australia 2011-2012), Sachin has his moments, even if the wizardry is beginning to wane.
So what happened in 2001 and why did it trigger such a radical change from the 1990sIJ 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 the second half of his career (2001-2011) has been so linked to team victories — many but not all with substantial contributions from the man himself — has made Tendulkar’s retirement that much more poignant. In terms of his craftsmanship, this period allowed him to flourish because he was 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, over 35 or pushing 40.
The compelling verity Indian cricket has to come to terms with is Tendulkar (and Ganguly and Dravid and laxman) represented the last generation for whom test cricket was the ultimate form of the game, and for whom belonging to a quality test side was a matter of not just ambition but deeply-felt conviction. To cricketers born in the mid-1980s and later, test cricket is scarcely as much of a priority. This is not a moral judgement; it is a statement of reality.
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.
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