WHAT R. C. Robertson-Glasgow wrote of Don Bradman I transplant on Tendulkar: "Sachin has as many angles as a polygon!" How angular Sachin's bat went in the Bulawayo Test (caught when 74), as in the Harare Test (held when 69), is what prompted Sunil Gavaskar to come down seemingly heavily on India's tender titan. "Seemingly" because Sunil's observation was a Little Master stroke calculated to get Sachin to train his sights afresh. To quote Sunil: "Why blame Laxman when the best batsman in the universe gets a half-century (69) and then gets out when a big score from him is the crying need of the team. Then perhaps it is time to listen to the Australians who rate their captain as the best Test batsman in the world."
That Sunny "got through" to Sachin became manifest from the style and substance the Elfin One brought to crafting 81 not out (off 110 balls with 8 fours) against Carl Hooper's West Indies on June 30, 2001, at Bulawayo. "That was but in a one-dayer against a depleted West Indies team!" the carping critic might argue.
Well, that Windies team would have looked less depleted if Brian Lara had stayed on to face the one-to-one challenge posed by Sachin. Make no mistake, Lara just withdrew - as the hour to confront Sachin drew near. Nothing else rationally explains Lara's going all the way to Harare and then ditching a West Indies sorely needing Sachin-matching runs from Brian's virtuoso willow.
So, even in the one-day contest, Lara is now rather conscious that the tiny Sachin stands 10,000-plus tall. Sachin himself conceded on TV that he had to readjust the "swing" of his MRF bat-rubber on Bulawayo and Harare wickets where "the ball did not come on to play your shots." It was by making this disciplined realignment that Sachin came up with triangular scores of 70 not out; 9; 81 not out; and 122 not out in India's first four one-dayers on Zimbabwe terrain. It was Sachin's failure similarly to stay put in the Harare and Bulawayo Tests that had spurred Sunil Gavaskar to psyche India's pocket wizard by taunting: "Perhaps it is time to listen to the Australians who rate their captain as the best Test batsman in the world for his ability to perform and, with that, either win or save matches for his team outside his home environs."
When should this trait have been really underscored in Steve Waugh, now that the Ashes' urn stands stirred with the Edgbaston Test? To Sunil I say that Steve Waugh was pre-eminently required, in the three pre-Ashes Tests in India, to showcase his talent "as the best Test batsman in the world for his ability to perform and, with that, either win or save matches for his team outside his own home environs." Steve was on acid view in such a milieu during Australia's only innings in which he batted during the Wankhede Stadium Test. Likewise, in the second stanza of, first, the Eden Gardens Test and, then, the Chepauk Test. The motivation for Steve to seasoned-bat Australia to victories, on his own steam, in those three key Tests was terrific. If only because going into the Ashes series with 18 Test wins under his Qantas seat-belt would have been half the Aussie battle against England. Yet did Steve reveal a blade sharp enough (in those three needle Tests) to "either win or save matches for his team outside his home environs"?
In the first Test at Mumbai, in response to India's moderate 176 all out, Australia was 71 for 3, as Steve walked into a situation where he had thriven all through his career. Yet Australia's total had advanced to but 98 when Steve Waugh (15) yielded his wicket to fresher Rahul Sanghvi (caught by Rahul Dravid close to the wicket). Steve's so going (98 for 4) saw the cream of Australia's batting all but whipped off. For Steve's dismissal was the signal for Ricky Ponting to "Packer duck" (99 for 5). That Matthew Hayden (119) and Adam Gilchrist (122) picked up the gauntlet with a blazing sixth-wicket stand of 197 (seeing Australia finish at 349) is the rub of the then still raw Harbhajan ball on the green. Thus it was not captain Steve Waugh who saved Australia's bacon in the first Test at Wankhede Stadium.
Over to Eden and Paradise Lost! Steve Waugh's 110 (as this second Test got under way) must rate as one of the polished gems of Australian cricket. But the litmus Test came in the second Eden essay - Australia 116 for 3 when India was 212 runs on. A position from which only yet another Steve century, at Eden, could have turned the game, decisively, Australia's way, after V.V.S. Laxman (281) had at last "arrived" following skipper Waugh's decision to ask India to bat again, 274 behind. Here Steve did put up a brave effort to save Australia in tandem with Matthew Hayden (ultimately 67). But, when substitute Hemang Badani came up with that great one-handed catch (off Harbhajan Singh in the leg cordon), Steve was gone for 24. So demoralising was Steve's fall (as a specialist player of quality spin) that Australia, from 166 for 4, nosedived to 212 all out - to surrender that Eden Test by 171 runs. Steve's demise for 24 was thus the happening that opened the way for that Indian win frozen in the mind.
Okay, so you could not logically expect the man to hold together the Aussie innings, yet again, in that Eden Test. What then about the Chepauk decider in which it was Steve Waugh (47) who initiated a 391 jackknife fold-up, after Australia was so well placed (on the second morning) at 340 for 4? A practised Test hand's so faltering was least expected, so that the onus was all the more on Captain Steve to rescue the sinking Aussie ship on that fateful final Chepauk morning on March 22, 2001. And Steve (when yet again on 47) looked set for the big rescue act that not Sunil alone expected from him. This was when Steve was clinchingly taken by Shiv Sunder Das off Harbhajan Singh for the Aussie skipper, ironically, to prove instrumental in India's taking firm hold of the rubber-sealing Chepauk Test.
Conclusion - the three times in three Tests that Steve was expected to deliver he failed Australia in India. Does that make this Mohican a lesser world-class bat than Sunil fleshes him out to be? By no means. My only point is that even Steve Waugh was "vulnerable" just when Sunil chose to set him up against Sachin! Sunil had only one idea in drawing that June 21, 2001, Sachin-Steve parallel. It was to ensure that Sachin did not again lose focus when set for a Test hundred. Sunil, in sum, was serving on Sachin the same kind of notice he had when he observed that Tendulkar had a right to be ranked as the world's best only if he first overtook Brian Lara's Test-best 375 and then that left-hander's first-classy 501 not out!
Likewise, Sunil's critique of Sachin, now, needs to be viewed in perspective. After Zimbabwe had been shot out for 173 well before the end of the first day's play in the Bulawayo Test, Sachin - implied Sunil - had the runs (74), the confidence and the conditions to go for the big Bradman score. A double hundred was indeed there for the Sachin taking, when he played that wild wide-angle shot to be caught off Andy Blignaut. Likewise, when on 69 in the Harare Test, the state of the wicket warranted Sachin caution, not Sachin passion. It was here Sachin's slash off Heath Streak ("Away from it all!") that hastened Zimbabwe's squaring the Test series, at Harare, against the run of Bulawayo play.
Whether the Test was at Harare or at Bulawayo, the gravamen of Sunil's charge was that Sachin threw in the Turkish towel when set for a hundred. And it is when you finally reach that "mindset" hundred that you get to feel the hunger for those runs adding up to your third double century in Tests (compared to Bradman's 12 multiple tons). On both Test occasions, Sachin was so poised as for India's interest and his personal interest neatly to coincide. Only by seizing such an opportunity with both batting hands (hinted Sunil) do you live to hit 34 hundreds and 10,122 runs in Test cricket!
Also inbuilt in Sunil's barb is the warning that this is the point in his career for Sachin to beware in the game with the fickle name. Fickle because this game is not as predictable as it sounds in the noting: "Sachin Tendulkar will amass 20,480 runs and 81 centuries in the next 10 years if he maintains his present form," according to an assessment by Wisden Cricket Monthly. "In the past 27 months since February 1999, Tendulkar had piled up 1720 runs in 15 Tests at a near Bradmanesque average of 71.67. Should Tendulkar continue at that rate in the next decade, playing 12 Tests a year, and finally hang up his boots at the age of 38, he will have amassed 20,480 runs and 81 centuries in 202 Tests. His average will be a cool 66.06, placing him all alone on a unique second tier of champion batsmen. Still behind Bradman (99.94) but distinctly ahead of Graeme Pollock, George Headley and Herbert Sutcliffe (60-odd)."
Inherent in Wisden Cricket Monthly's estimate is the facile assumption that Sachin's powers of rungetting would witness no decline at all in the decade to come! Every Indian earnestly wishes so. Every Indian is also pragmatic enough to divine that the years ahead are going to be the most demanding (both mentally and physically) for Sachin. If only because, in terms of span, Sachin's already seen much run service. To assume that Sachin will maintain the same frenetic rate of rungetting through the coming 10 years is to lionise him to a point of no return. Let Sachin first put in the shade Sunil's Test tons and Test runs. First explore the "aggregateway" to 10,123 Test runs. In the bargain, Sachin ritualistically goes past Sunil's 34 Test hundreds.
Meanwhile, second thoughts are urgently needed (not only by Sunil) about the extent of pressure we put on Sachin's MRF shoulders. The two Tests in Zimbabwe proved an object-lesson in how even Sachin, now, has no escape from questing his way to a hundred. From this flashpoint, therefore, Sachin has no go but to sow - for India to reap.
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