"A HUNDRED centuries," he says. For a brief moment, I wonder if His Slimness, Shane Warne, who these days looks more string bean than baked bean, has lost his mind with his weight.
It's the day after India's unexpected win in the West Indies, a few days after Sachin Tendulkar's expected 29th century. What's there to write? For a decade we've been picking up our ragged thesaurus', looked under 'brilliant', then under 'genius' and attached those synonyms to Tendulkar. Talk about boring.
So I call up Shane Warne, because who better to speak about the world's most dominant batsmen than the world's most gifted bowler. Two men, of varying crafts and devilish wrists, who have stretched the boundaries of possibility in their respective arts.
It is when I ask Warne, how many hundreds he thinks Tendulkar will finish up with that he says: "A hundred centuries."
Is this some excessive generosity, some throwaway line, some fantastic, arbitrary number that's just entered his head. No, he's got it all perfectly worked out.
"I would be disappointed," says Warne, "if Sachin didnt get a hundred 100s in international cricket. I think he will easily get 40 Test centuries, probably 45, and about 55 one-day centuries."
That is then. But even now Tendulkar's numbers are staggering.
Twenty nine centuries. Thirty one fifties. Sixty scores of 50 and over. Ninety-three Tests. That's almost as many centuries as fifties. That's a century almost every third Test. That's a score of fifty and more two-thirds of the times he's at the crease.
It's a big feat for a small man. "Daylight." Here goes Warne again. I've asked him a question he's heard more times than he's dreamt of Darryl Cullinan. About Brian Lara and Tendulkar, both men who he's faced down 22 yards over time, and thus as judges go he is eminently qualified, a double Ph.d, so to speak.
Daylight is his answer. As in "Sachin is the best, daylight is second, and then there's the rest." This gap between Tendulkar and his peers has a predictable reason. As Warne says: "Day in and day out Sachin is the best." The corollary is obvious: other batsmen, great ones too, have slumps; Tendulkar's form varies as little as a dying man's heartbeat.
Yet Warne is not finished. "Lara is the best to watch when he is in form." In full flow, says leg spin's Picasso, "You'd pay money to watch him. He and Adam (Gilchrist) are the most exciting."
Warne and Tendulkar's battles have mostly been unequal contests, though in itself that neither diminishes the bowler nor elevates the batsmen. If anything, Tendulkar's famous scuffing of the pitch down the leg side in practice and specifically preparing for Warne was itself a staggering compliment. The Australian, in turn, has come to understand his foe.
What makes him special, I ask Warne, and his answer is as simple as Tendulkar makes a complex art appear. "Sachin judges the length quicker (than anyone else), he's on to the back foot or front foot quicker. And he doesn't play as many loose shots (as other batsmen)." Warne is appreciative too of Tendulkar's "execution of shot" and of his "patience and discipline."
I ask him whether he, who is known to wind up opponents (is there an Australian sledging gene?), slip in a sly comment here, a needling remark there, to unbalance a batsman, thinks it worthwhile to sledge Tendulkar. Does he, in fact, believe the small man can be moved to anger and thus indiscretion.
"No," he laughs. "We've tried it in the past. But it just spurs him on."
I quiz him on pressure, on a theory put forward in fact by Mahesh Bhupathi during a party in January this year, that Tendulkar, by virtue of circumstance (in India, his dismissal can alter the rhythm of a national heartbeat) is, in comparison to other cricketers, forced to lug a disproportionately heavy burden.
"Every player carries (his nation's) hope," Warne explains. But he is willing to concede, that by virtue of population and passion, "Tendulkar carries it more than anyone else."
There is no need for him to substantiate Tendulkar's cool (think Eskimos deep-freeze) or muscular determination, but, perhaps, I have caught him in a magnanimous mood, for he says that he feels "all the Indian team is tough." And despite a cliched Australian loathing for the Kiwis, and in contrast to the silly carping in India about a foreign coach, he adds: "(John) Wright has added a lot, he's added toughness and belief."
It's time, His Slimness has to go. A jog, perhaps? No matter, I'm still laughing over his first answer. The question was about spin, and the recent lazy argument that Tendulkar has been out to spinners too often in the recent past and is, perhaps, susceptible to the turning ball. Coincidence has been turned into a conspiracy theory.
This spinner, the spinner, will have none of it. "Who were the bowlers?" he asks. "What was his score? 150? Someone has to get him out. Statistics are what you make of them, you can make them look good or bad."
Then Warne pauses. "Sachin Tendulkar has no problem with spin." Then he sighs. "I wish he had."
Comments
SHARE