Yesterday marked a day of celebration in India of the type usually reserved for the honouring of religious deities — which in a way, it was. The occasion: the twentieth anniversary of the Test debut of Sachin Tendulkar, the greatest batsman of the modern era.
It may be a cliché, but that does not make it less true. In a land where cricket is a religion, the “Little Master” is revered like a god — a situation not lost on a man who prefers to mask his movements in his homeland for fear of being mobbed.
Asked to name his greatest strength last week, the 36-year-old said: “Everyone likes me ... When one billion people are wishing you well, not much can go wrong.” What would sound narcissistic from a lesser mortal passed as a modest statement of fact from the gently spoken Tendulkar.
Urchins in the slums of his native Mumbai will scream “Saaa-chhhhin” when asked to name their favourite player. “He is the best — he is the master blaster,” said Rahul Singh, 13, a schoolboy playing with a tennis ball and plank of wood on one of the city’s sun-scorched maidans — an analysis echoed by the most seasoned pundits. “He’s got 17,000 one-day runs. He’s got the world record for Test runs, too. He bats so nicely — so much better than Ponting or K. P. or M. S. Dhoni.” The Tendulkar phenomenon began inauspiciously, on November 15, 1989, when a 16-year-old schoolboy walked out against Pakistan in the cricketing crucible of Karachi. He made a nervy 15 before being bowled by Waqar Younis, who was also making his debut. “It was the most important moment of my career,” Tendulkar told The Times last week. “That’s where it all began.”
His debut was a rare taste of failure, which Tendulkar admits led him to doubt his ability. Just a few weeks later, however, in the final Test of the series, the boy prodigy became a man when, not wearing a helmet, he took a short ball on the nose in Sialkot. Despite his nose being broken, a blood-spattered Tendulkar declined treatment and batted on. He made 57 in an innings that helped India to rediscover the romance of cricket.
Such moments have made Tendulkar a personal talisman for many of his countrymen. His career has coincided with an economic renaissance that has given many Indians a new confidence, said Venu Nair, the South Asia president of World Sports Group, which last year bought the media rights for the Indian Premier League for more than $1.5 billion (now about £90 million).
“One crucial thing was that from an early age, the wonderkid Sachin was not good only at home,” Nair said. “Wherever he went he excelled. That let an entire generation of Indians — myself included — believe we could compete anywhere.”
In an age of playboy cricketers, the breadth of Tendulkar’s fanbase is unique. India’s housewives approve of his impeccable family man credentials. Those scraping by can relate to a man of modest background who did not take a holiday abroad until a decade into his career. Advertising executives share their enthusiasm: endorsing products from cement to luxury watches will earn Tendulkar as much as £8 million this year.
Yet his career is not without traces of misfortune. He captained his country for two stints, neither successful. More poignantly, perhaps, his fate has often been to save his nation’s honour, with many of his finest knocks — most notably, perhaps, his 136 against Pakistan in the 1999 Chennai Test, widely regarded as one of the finest innings ever — coming in games that an underperforming India side lost.
“Yes, you feel bad,” Tendulkar said. “I have done well, but the team hasn’t. And I play for the team. It’s been a difficult thing.”
To dwell on such shortcomings, however, would be to miss the greatness of Tendulkar.
Long before his first Test innings he had been marked as special. Batting for his school, Shardashram, in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1988 he was part of a record unbroken 664-run partnership that reduced a hapless opposition to tears and made headlines in the national papers. Later that year, aged 15, he hit an unbeaten century on his first-class debut for Bombay against Gujarat.
Then, with the weight of India’s expectations heaped on his shoulders far from home, the prodigy blossomed.
Touring England in 1990, Tendulkar, then 17, became the second-youngest cricketer to score a Test century, making 119 at Old Trafford in an innings Wisden called “a disciplined display of immense maturity”.
In 1992 he hinted at the true scale of his greatness, scoring 114 against Australia in Perth on what was billed as the world’s fastest pitch. In the same series, an unbeaten 148 in Sydney prompted Merv Hughes to tell Allan Border: “This little p***k’s going to get more runs than you.”
Hughes was right: last year Tendulkar surpassed Brian Lara’s record for most Test runs. For Ricky Ponting, he is “the guy that sets the benchmark as far as batting is concerned ... guys like me and the rest just chase and get as close as we can to him”.
In fact, nobody in the game seems to have a bad word to say about Tendulkar — one suspects because he is genuinely nice off the field. Donald Bradman, no less, once said he was “very, very struck” by how Tendulkar’s “compactness and his stroke production and his technique ... seemed to gel” — mirroring, the Australian believed, his own strokeplay.
When he reaches the very top of his game, however, Tendulkar has emphasised his ability to enter a state of zen-like calm. “It’s just a level of concentration when you forget everything else,” he said. “Against the same bowler, under the same conditions, at the same pace, when your mind is free you have time to play your shots; when you have too many thoughts in your mind, you are late.”
Two decades into his career he may not quite be able to replicate the jaw-dropping genius of his youth, but he can revisit this trance-like state. Against England in Chennai, in the Test that followed the Mumbai terror attacks last year, Tendulkar said that he did not realise that India had won until the opposition came to the crease to shake his hand. He scored an unbeaten 103.
“He hasn’t just survived, he’s left his imprint on every situation,” Harsha Bhogle, the doyen of Indian cricket commentators, said. “It is a colossal achievement. On his first tour of England he batted against Eddie Hemmings, who had made his first-class debut seven years before Tendulkar was born. He now shares a dressing room with kids who were having their umbilical cord cut when he was scoring his first century.”
His greatest hits
Sachin Tendulkar gives The Times his top 20 moments in cricket:
1 Wearing the India cap for the first time Against Pakistan in Karachi, aged 16 years 205 days
2 First Test hundred 119 not out at Old Trafford in 1990, aged 17 years 112 days
3 Perth Test 1992 114 v Australia on lightning WACA pitch
4 Hero Cup semi-final v South Africa, 1993 Bowls the last over and concedes only three runs to secure victory
5 82 at Auckland, 1994 Rapid match-winning one-day innings as an emergency opener
6 Titan Cup victory, 1996
7 Sahara Cup, Toronto, 1997 Captains understrength India to 4-1 series win over Pakistan
8 155 not out v Australia, Chennai, 1998 Takes Shane Warne apart on turning pitch
9 Sharjah Sandstorm, 1998 Two hundreds off Australia
10 Meeting Don Bradman, 1998 With Warne on The Don’s 90th
11 Century at Headingley, 2002 A superb 193
12 World Cup game v Pakistan, 2003 98 off 75 balls
13 First Test series win away to Pakistan in 2004
14 35th Test century, v Sri Lanka in Delhi, 2005 Passes Sunil Gavaskar’s 34 centuries
15 Test win at Trent Bridge, 2007 India shine in “jellybean” Test
16 Test win in Perth, 2008 A fine way for India to come back from a controversial defeat in Sydney
17 Commonwealth Bank series, 2008 117 not out at SCG paves way for finals victory
18 Mohali Test v Pakistan, 2008 Overhauls Brian Lara’s Test record run tally in half-century
19 Chennai Test v England 2008 103 not out to secure emotional win after Mumbai atrocities
20 175 v Australia Hyderabad, 2009 A one-day masterpiece
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