AS "an oxymoron" did External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh epitomise the idea of "a moderate Taliban". No less an oxymoron is the notion of "a moderate Sachin"! That is why Sachin's 26 (from 81 balls in 87 minutes) came as no icing on the 103 Tendulkar cake for that last-day Ahmedabad Test crowd. So Sachin "did a Victor Trumper"! Don Bradman, when he saw runs there for the plundering, would use the situation to drive the bowling into the ground to enhance his batting average. Victor Trumper, by sportive contrast, would look around for a bright young lad, down on his luck, and make a spot show of yielding his wicket, deservedly, to the boy.
This is where Sachin (26) emulated Victor Trumper rather than Don Bradman when letting fresher Richard Dawson "walk"away with his treasure-trove wicket that Saturday afternoon of 15 December 2001. Even in the December of his career, you could not envision Sunil Gavaskar doing such a thing. Take the Ahmedabad-like final day of the January 1982 fourth Test vs Keith Fletcher's England. From the word go in the second stanza of that Eden Gardens Test, Sunil (on the Tuesday of 6 January 1982) struck such a rhythm that he looked like crafting a 100 in quick time. But as he raced past his half-century following the departure of Krish Srikkanth (25) at 48, Sunil suddenly lost Dilip Vengsarkar (32) and G. R. Viswanath (0) - within the ambit of 3 runs. With the trigger-happy Sandeep Patil at the other end, there was thus the outside chance of Fletcher's England venturing to level the series, 1-1, as Gavaskar's India (40 behind in the first essay and needing a swift 306 for a win) nosedived to 120 for 3 in the final session of play during that Calcutta Test. That was the signal for the free-stroking Sunil to sit on the Eden Gardens fence and settle for finishing at 83 not out (in an Indian total of 170 for 3). As Gavaskar, after that, came away from Calcutta, it was World Cup Hockey time in his Bombay, where Sunil ran into Australia's stick wizard, Ric Charlesworth - no less adept at cricket. To Charlesworth's pointed query as to how possibly Gavaskar could have abandoned the quest for another quality hundred, Sunil manfully responded: "Getting too old for the hunt, Ric!"
But Sachin is not even 30 - in any case, it is early days, yet, for the Elfin One to "walk" at the drop of a bat. It was the second time since Sachin ran the gauntlet of Mike Denness that Tendulkar was so walking (at Ahmedabad after Mohali). In doing so, Sachin (I say) was setting, too prematurely in his 27 Test-ton career, too dangerous a precedent for himself. At the emotive height of the Mike Denness ruckus, South African wicket-keeper David Richardson got to the pith of it all when he noted: "Sachin is no saint!" The devil's disciple that every wicket-keeper has to be, in his job, places the big-gloves man in the ideal position to judge batting sanctimony in its essence. Not for a moment am I suggesting that Sachin is anything less than transparent. But even Sachin integrity has to be weighed in the scale of hard-headed realism - as this captive performer gets on with the job for India. If the team comes first (as it always does with Sachin), it could well be in the side's enlightened interest not to walk at a given decimal point in the future. Short point - there is no call for Sachin to carry the Mike Denness-imposed cross of having, compulsively, to walk from hereon.
If only Mike Denness had played as fair with Sachin as he did (when England captain) with Alvin Kallicharran! Down Memory Lane we travel to the Sunday evening of 3 February 1974. To the close of the second day's play in the first Test between Mike Denness' England and Rohan Kanhai's West Indies. By that stage at the Queen's Park Oval, Alvin Kallicharran had lifted the West Indies from 196 for 6 to 274 for 7, while himself striking 142, bat in hand. Sight of that bat still in hand irked Tony Greig to a silly point where he showed he had not run out of ideas - not yet. As Bernard Julien played the last ball of that second day from Derek Underwood serenely to Tony Greig within handshaking distance, wicket-keeper Alan Knott removed the stumps (at the batsman's end) to oblige the square-leg umpire.
Even as ten England players began to leave the field, the eleventh, Tony Greig, picked up the "dead" ball and, seeing big centurion Kallicharran already down the pitch (as the non-striker on the way to the pavilion) pegged the middle stump at the bowler's end! Umpire Douglas Sang Hue had no go but to uphold Tony Greig's solo-artist appeal for a run out. Imagine the Caribbean crowd's indignation at the happening! But Mike Denness, as England's concerned new skipper, rose to the occasion in style. Well before play the following morning, getting the two umpires to play diplomatic ball, Mike Denness had the following press statement thoughtfully put out: "Whilst appreciating that this is not strictly within the Laws of Cricket, the England manager and captain have, in the interests of cricket as a whole and the future of this (West Indies) tour in particular, requested that the (Tony Greig) appeal be withdrawn."
If only Mike Denness had displayed similar resilience of mind and spirit, as match referee, in the Port Elizabethan red-cherry case of Sachin! By the time Mike Denness downplayed the ball-tampering smear vis-a-vis Sachin, there was no grace left in the action. I pinpoint the Tony Greig Port-of-Spain incident to bring into focus the fact that it is not as if Mike Denness - before the Sachin to-do - had not acted with foresight in reversing an umpiring decision already made. That Tony Greig could go on to captain England after such a misdemeanour is something that should have scandalised at least Mike Brearley. For had not Mike Brearley written at the time: "Intentional cheating is the lowest form of behaviour. No one accused Tony Greig of that at Port-of-Spain. He has been defended on the grounds that his running out of Kallicharran was a spur-of-the-moment response. But such responses show the man. And Greig, on the cricket field, bears all the marks of one who would compete with his grandmother for the last nut on Christmas Day."
Having written that, Mike Brearley, astonishingly, agreed to tour India, in 1976-77, as vice-captain of the very England team that (after Mike Denness) came to be led by Tony Greig! Lever enough for all India to ask how the English expect us to follow "the vaseline of least resistance" still. If Bishan Singh Bedi was the tart target in 1976, it was Sachin Tendulkar 25 years after. There is this impression that India can see Sachin do no wrong. On the contrary, we in India now expect Sachin to deliver in the same vintage vein as did Brian Lara, in Sri Lanka, with that never-say-die punchline of 178 & 40; 74 & 45; 221 & 130. Brian Lara is the Barry Richards touchstone by which we Test, anew, Our Man Sachin. The moment Brian Lara fired afresh, he displaced Sachin on the cover, putting "Ten" on his hundred-scoring mettle.
Diamond cut diamond it is here. A polished gem Brian Lara remains in our cricketing eyes, yet it does hurt Indian sentiment when Wisden, of all institutions, looks to have drawn up its parameters in a prism designed to keep Sachin Tendulkar out of one hundred of the best. Look at the absurd WISDEN 20-20 situation to which this led on DD. Each time the Almanack parameter came into perspective, Wisden's computer-savvy statistician had to bend over backwards to uphold it. Predictably, it turned out to be an acrobatic exercise near impossible to sustain on TV. Still, if that is the Wisden viewpoint on Sachin, we Injuns have to learn to live with it. But at least WISDEN 20-20 could have been more careful when evoking the aura of another legendary Indian: Subhash Gupte.
I did not know at which side of the narrow screen to look as Charu Sharma, in his generational ignorance, picked up the point about Subhash Gupte's having lost his specialist slot, in India's Test eleven, because the Junior Nawab of Pataudi did not have enough confidence in his wrist-spun artistry. To refresh reader memory, Tiger Pataudi's first Test was Subhash Gupte's last! As Tiger Pataudi fell for 13 - in the December 1961 third Test at Kotla between Nari Contractor's India and Ted Dexter's England - for once Subhash Gupte, too, could not get his parabolic act together, he returned figures of 36-14-78-1 (Mike Smith his only victim)! This in the rain-curtailed England innings of 256 for 3 - as retort to India's 466. Maybe the disciplinary action - by then already due against Subhash Gupte - preyed upon the mind of the Rumpelstiltskin of Spin. "I felt bitter," recorded "Fergie" Gupte. "I would have liked to have played against the West Indies, making it my last trip."
How it was a disciplining ruling by our Cricket Board (following an incident in Delhi's Imperial Hotel at Connaught Circus) that kept Subhash Gupte out of the early-1962 tour of the West Indies is a happening it distresses me to unravel here. For Subhash Gupte is no more, so that our abiding image of "Fergie" is one of a genuine world-class spinner. Thus for WISDEN 20-20, now, to suggest that Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi had any role to play in Subhash Gupte's being jettisoned from that tour of the West Indies is to tarnish the name of the Nawab who gave Indian cricket its robustly forward look. The Junior Nawab of Pataudi became captain of India during that traumatic early-1962 tour of the West Indies (in the face of not having played in the first two Tests) only because Nari Contractor was numbingly laid low by Charlie Griffith. So Tiger Pataudi (as a mere player) had barely got a glimpse of Subhash Gupte bowling in a Test match - when that master spinner was shunted out of Indian cricket itself. Here it is, for the edification of WISDEN 20-20, in Subhash Gupte's own words:
"An enquiry meeting was to be held in Calcutta" (during the fourth Test that followed at Eden Gardens against Ted Dexter's England). "It was not. It was held in Madras" (during the January 1962 Corporation Stadium Test), "just before the team to the West Indies was to be announced. I went for it and explained what had happened. At the end of the enquiry, (as) I was staying with friends in Madras, Nari came to the house. He said: 'Prepare yourself for a shock. The Board President has told the selectors not to pick you for the tour' (of the West Indies)."
The bracketed portions above are mine (to enlarge the picture) and the Board President in question is M.A. Chidambaram. I have, becomingly, quoted only the operative portion of Subhash Gupte's explanation. My only objective in doing so is to correct the WISDEN 20-20 impression (now regrettably carried by viewers) that the Junior Nawab of Pataudi had something to do with Subhash Gupte's career coming to such a messy end. The troubled start to Pataudi's own Test odyssey is pithily summed up by Mansur Ali Khan as he writes: "It was some considerable time before the Indian selectors questioned my ability to bat with just one eye!"
An unerring eye for Pataudi detail is the least viewers expect from WISDEN 20-20 - not an observation that makes Gupte fact sound stranger than Tiger fiction.
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