Sachin Tendulkar: The Master and the Pupil

It is quite a compliment if a knock of 163 runs off 133 balls with 16 fours and five sixes is being referred to as a serene knock; but that can happen in the 20th year of Sachin Tendulkar’s career where strike rates are being redefined by the merciless Sehwag and the majestic Yuvraj.

The master though still remains the cornerstone of India’s batting brilliance.

Shane Warne recently said that India’s rise to the top of the table would rest much on the fitness and availability of Tendulkar.

Replying to a reporter’s question, Sourav Ganguly once said that being dropped from a team’s playing XI is something that happens in everyone’s career and then smiled and added that in India only Tendulkar would never be dropped. Who could argue with that as the Master Blaster is busy scripting a new chapter in his career in the last few years, a time when many critics were writing his cricketing obituary.

He has had a few ordinary and an occasional poor series in the last decade, most notably the recent Test series in Sri Lanka and the 2004 series at home against Australia, though he missed half of the latter due to injury but still managed to conjure a minor gem of 50 plus in the last Test in Mumbai that India won.

Apart from these and a few other blips, he has made every detractor chew his words—Test and ODI centuries while chasing, an ODI series win in Australia largely due to his back-to-back performances and more than a few match saving efforts.

Much of Tendulkar’s success recently has come when he’s had a decent start to the series, and a failure in the early stages has made it difficult for him to turn the momentum his way.

The failure in the ODIs in Sri Lanka is a recent example, though two of the three decisions ideally should have gone in his favour.

In 2002 in Australia, despite being in good form, a very ordinary decision by Steve Bucknor in the first match in Brisbane led to low scores in the matches in Adelaide and Melbourne. An error of judgment in Adelaide and luck not running his way in Melbourne, in the series where Rahul Dravid forced his way to the small group of India’s all-time great batsmen.

When the party reached Sydney, Tendulkar responded with a 241 not out and took India to a mammoth 705 in partnership with a sublime 178 by Laxman.

The innings led Ian Chappell to comment that he had never seen a batsman of Tendulkar’s calibre struggle for the entire period of a long innings, though many others thought it was an innings that had the ascetic discipline of a monk.

Having been dismissed nicking deliveries outside the offside in the earlier matches, Tendulkar waited and waited and made the bowlers bowl closer to him to play them on the on-side while resisting any temptation on the off-side.

The last tour to Australia started with a blistering 62 in the first Test in Melbourne and Tendulkar built that momentum to score sublime hundreds in Sydney and Adelaide to go with another scintillating 71 in Perth.

He ended the series with 493 runs, his best return from a series till date. Ian Chappell again asked Tendulkar after the Sydney hundred that while he was very aggressive in Melbourne, in Sydney though he played beautifully the aggression was missing.

The ever-modest Tendulkar just thanked Chappell for his praise without elucidating the matter.

That is what the experts miss; to the world Tendulkar is a master but the master himself is still a keen student of the game. His undiminished love and passion for the game partly comes from the attitude of retaining the teenager’s wonder for the game; the master always keeps learning.

He realises that the weather, the pitch, the bowler, the ball, the situation of the match and his own comfort level in the middle can never be the same. The mixture of all this can be similar but not same.

There is one thing though that remains in high probability, if Tendulkar gets a big score or even a decent knock in the beginning of a series, it probably takes the burden off his shoulders and he then plays with flair, confidence and freedom. With a 61 and a 163 not out in just the beginning of the tour, Tendulkar would be the man to watch out for when the battle in the Test matches begins in Hamilton.