Wisden's wisdom puzzling

Published : Aug 11, 2001 00:00 IST

RAJU BHARATAN

IF it were not Wisden vintaging as The Centurion, such dismissive derecognition of Sachin Tendulkar as "one in a hundred" would have been interpreted as an attempt by the awarding body to win spot attention for its ratings. But Wisden is Wisden, so that Sir Donald Bradman has, here, to rate as Number One. Once The Don is there where he belongs, could Sachin be too far behind? Certainly not 100 notches removed from the Legend who viewed, in the elfin Sachin, a split batting image of himself - and Bradman was no televisionary. So how must Sachin feel? "Wisdenigrated" obviously. The six letters of Wisden superimposed upon the six letters of Sachin find the six letters of Laxman reigning supreme! It is not that we rank Laxman lower, it is just that we still rate Sachin higher! Sachin's shock elimination from Wisden's Century of Achievers, therefore, naturally comes as a slap in the face of millions of Indians hooked on the cherub who had Allan Donald wildly tele-celebrating each time that superfast got Tendulkar. But now that we know where the Boy on the Burning Deck stands, I welcome it. If only because Sachin is at that sensitive stage in his career where he needs a mighty spur to motivate him into performing in a vein statistically calculated to prove Barry Richards wrong. And Wisden, I say, has provided Sachin with just such an impetus.

If Sir Donald Bradman sent for Sachin, was it merely because he viewed Tendulkar exploding as just a one-day phenom at Sharjah? And not because Tendulkar had, immediately before that, hit 4 & 155 not out in the Chennai Test; 79 in the Calcutta Test; 177 & 31 in the Bangalore Test during Sachin's mesmerising March 1998 conquest of Shane Warne? The Don is no more - for us to ask him if Sachin is this less. This "Wisdenouement" in the case of one to the Bradmanor born must now hurt Sachin only to the after-effect of his having to throw down the gauntlet afresh. That is what makes me wish that Sachin is there during the Test series in Sri Lanka. If Sachin is there, it is to be regretted that Laxman is not there. For Laxman's presence, at the other Test end, would instinctively have made Sachin discern that he had to succeed in the teeth of the Wisden odds against him, now, being 281 to one! No, I do not grudge Venkatasai Laxman his enviable new No. 6 placing in the world of Wisden, even less his meteoric No. 1 ranking among Indian batsmen in mid-2001. After all, Steve Waugh himself esteemed Laxman's Eden 281 as worthy of viewership among the world's best, going so far as to note: "He is potentially as good as Tendulkar." Yet even Steve Waugh added the rider: "The seaming wickets in Zimbabwe will provide a stern challenge and give us a clue to his future prospects."

That Laxman failed to translate Steve-foreseen potential into performance in the Bulawayo Test (28 and 38) as in the Harare Test (15 and 20) becomes a point of detail for Wisden. Though this does raise the "parametering" point about whether a one-time Test showing should win Wisden precedence over a career of recurring accomplishment. If Laxman's pedigree 281 lifts him to the dizzying 6th spot in the Top 10 Test Innings Of All Time (turning him into India's No. 1 all over again!), "TVVS" wins such signal recognition because India came to be viewed as conquering Eden. If it had, willy-nilly, to be a Test innings by Sachin that saw India win similarly, what about Tendulkar's 155 not out (191 balls - Shane Warne mastered with 4 sixes and 14 fours) that had - after we finished 71 runs behind in the first stanza - our team racing to 418 for 4 (decl.) for Mark Taylor's Australia to bite the Chepauk sawdust in the March 1998 first Test? Surely that Sachin 155 deserved to be somewhere in the WISDEN 100, considering that it witnessed India win, conclusively, by 179 runs to set the pace for a 2-1 series triumph? By all means anoint Laxman. But without consigning Sachin to the bargain basement.

In fact, this Wisden appraisal, I feel, has cast an even greater burden on Laxman than it has on Sachin. For, where Sachin knows for a grim fact that he has lost Wisden, Laxman now, perennially, has to carry the cross of living up to this cricketing institution's rare rating. A cartilage operation in the right knee is no ordinary hurdle to overcome. Even Vijay Manjrekar was not the same attacking batsman after he underwent this mode of surgery upon coming away midway through the 1953 tour of England. Remember, in Laxman's loose-limbed approach, it is the ball of the foot that determines how touch-artistically the ball goes to the ropes, so that we have, now, to keep our toes crossed. For, from the point he gets back, Laxman fails, in a Test match, at his Wisden peril. It is peril that brings the very best out of Sachin. This has still to be conclusively demonstrated in the Test-case of Laxman.

Laxman, I know, is the last one to celebrate his elevation to all-time world-celebrity status at the cost of Sachin's total elimination. But take it from me that Sachin's Wisden discomfiture is already a matter of secret rejoicing among the top brass in the Indian team. For a decade and more now, our stand-out performers have watched Sachin steal their thunder.

Now Titan Tendulkar has been cut to size. By the one name in the game that prestigiously matters. I have been in the thick of too many Indian Test teams not to know how peers react to a peerless performer. If you think that, in reasoning thus, I am sowing the wind, you have no precise idea of the kind of whirlwind Sachin is in the matter of blowing away superstar rival after superstar rival in the Indian team. On the surface, therefore, you will hear all the names that count express their regrets at Sachin's having been so summarily bypassed. But, in their heart of hearts, they are not human if they do not feel fulfilled.

All of us know how, in the Australian team, Bradman was resented all along the line that led to bodyline. Not because The Don's runs did not help Australia win, but because it deflected all attention from the personae of others no less prominent in the team. Sachin, likewise, has paid the supreme penalty for his Bradmanly suzerainty. That this pound sterling of flesh should have been extracted by Wisden is the grim irony of it all. Sachin must be looking afresh at his MRF-embossed bat. Wondering what more he is expected to do, in the Test arena, for that MRF to symbolise 100 in the Wisden scorebook. You need the oaken heart of a Sachin to acknowledge that this merely means he has to begin all over again - Wisde novo. Yet there is such a thing as feeling mentally drained. Fortunately the Wisden bombshell came to be dropped when Sachin was in front of the TV set, not in it. This gave Sachin time - and space - in his ambient drawing-room to reflect rather than respond. What Wisden, very simply, has asked Sachin to do is to reinvent himself. Test-drive himself - with a new-found sense of urgency - Sachin must from this point of no Wisden return. How tough the going is could be gauged from the fact that - after Gary Sobers' 365 not out vs Pakistan at Kingston (early in 1958) makes it to but No. 33 - even Brian Lara's world-record 375 (for the West Indies vs England at St. John's) materialises only at No. 10 in the WISDEN 100. This 375 is what Sunil Gavaskar, over seven years ago, eyemarked as the Test target for Tendulkar to set his India cap at.

Ha, Sunil! How pleasantly surprised Gavaskar (by Tendulkar contrast) must have felt to glimpse his 236 not out (against Clive Lloyd's West Indies in the December 1983 sixth Test at Madras) make it as the Indian 8th - if barely getting into the WISDEN 100 at No. 96! For that late-1983 Test series, by this 236 not-out stage, had already been won 3-0 by Clive Lloyd's West Indies. The Chepauk Test 236 not out thus came not only when the match was a no-contest, it also dragged the game to a dreary draw. So much so that Wisden itself, there and then, "wrote off" this Sunil 236 not out as not worthy of mention in its "100-to-come"! Wisden 1985 carried the following noting about that Sunil 236 not out (a mark just overtaken by Laxman): "After the effects of overnight rain had delayed the start of the fourth day by an hour, Marshall again bowled with hostility. From his second ball Gavaskar survived a vehement appeal for a catch at third slip; and the West Indians were so convinced that Gavaskar was out that they did not offer congratulations when, between lunch and tea, he reached his record-breaking century after batting for 271 minutes. Only two wickets fell during a day which finished with Gavaskar on 149. On the fifth and last day, Kapil Dev waited for Gavaskar to pass the previous highest Indian Test score (231 by Vinoo Mankad against New Zealand in 1955-56) before making a token declaration. Gavaskar batted in all for 644 minutes and hit 23 4s and two 5s," concluded Wisden.

After such a report, Wisden should have, logically, taken its Indian No. 8 pick from two other Test double centuries by Gavaskar against the same West Indies - either his April 1971 Port-of-Spain 220 (ensuring a draw sealing a landmark 1-0 rubber for Wadekar's India) or Sunil's December 1978 knock of 205 at the Wankhede Stadium, a Test double ton envisioned as his best by his uncle: Indian wicket-keeper Madhav Mantri. If at all Wisden handpicked the 236 not out for its having seen Sunil overtake The Don's record of 29 Test hundreds, it should have said so in its justification. But Wisden Online's narration records nothing of the kind.

This is the point - that even "Little Master The First" (in the face of "Little Master The Second" not being there at all in the WISDEN 100) must be cited for the right big ton. Much has already been written about how G. S. Ramchand (as India's historically winning captain in the December 1959 second Test at Kanpur vs Richie Benaud's Australia) felt shocked to find Jasu Patel's match figures of 14 for 124 not orbiting that off-spinner into the World's Top 10. The point that has gone unnoticed is what Gulabrai Sipahimalani Ramchand had to say about Narendra Hirwani's second innings' figures of 15.2-3-75-8 (in the January 1988 fourth Test vs Viv Richards' West Indias at Madras) fetching him the 5th place among the Indian Top 10 and the 39th slot in world rankings - just above Jasu Patel's Green Park first innings analysis of 33.5-16-69-9. "If I was the captain when Jasu Patel so ran through Richie Benaud's Australia," said Ramchand in an agitated aside to me, "I was the Indian manager in that Madras Test in which Narendra Hirwani came up with his 8 for 75. This was on a Chepauk wicket that - from his first over itself - had Hirwani turning the ball a yard or more! So that Chepauk wicket was as near unplayable as made no difference by the time Hirwani took 8 for 75 to facilitate a 255-run win for Ravi Shastri's India. While, on the Kanpur Green Park wicket some 28 years earlier, against the full might of Aussie batting, Jasu Patel had to be the genuine offie to turn the ball the width he did. Narendra Hirwani's peformance, therefore, I view as nothing - compared to Jasu Patel's world-class feat."

The debate continues: Patel vs Hirwani; Lara vs Tendulkar. Is Sachin reserving the right of reply - out there in the middle?

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