The Napolean of Centurian - TED CORBETT

IS there anyone, no matter how experienced, how qualified, how seasoned, who dare to measure the greatness that lies within Sachin Tendulkar? I doubt it. In an era of sublime batsmen - Lara, Kallis, Dravid and Ganguly, the Australian top five, none of whom need to have their names spelt out -Sachin has no equal.For 13 years Test and one-day batsmanship has been defined by his deeds. We have been in awe of his skills, ready first of all to be enchanted by his youth, then to be respectful of his mighty figures, and now to be assured that, whatever Bradman achieved, whatever Gavaskar did, Tendulkar stands on his own.He is not just the richest of cricketers but the most richly rewarding to watch.

In the early 21st century we can easily recall the achievements of another generation only recently past: Lloyd and Richards, the Chappell brothers, Martin Crowe, Javed Miandad, Gower and Botham, Azharuddin and Zaheer Abbas; all touched with angelic grace and producing figures to astound us. None measure up to the prowess of Tendulkar, the supreme batsman. We knew it when the World Cup began and now we have had all our adjectives confirmed, all our dreams realised, seen his muscular batsmanship reach heights we only guessed at, seen, best of all, his courage, his imaginative use of the unorthodox, and wondered once again at his pocket battleship strength. Here is no Viv Richards using his boxer's power to whip the ball to whatever part of the field took his fancy; here is no David Gower, harnessing his lithesome elegance and timing to ease the ball hither and thither.

For, let us make no bones about it, Tendulkar is small yet, like those Amazons of the tennis circuit Venus and Serena Williams, he can stand away from the ball and yet hit it powerfully. Into the crowd as he did against Pakistan in that never-to-be-forgotten win or around the boundary ropes as he did in the England game. There has never been another batsman like him. One of a kind; and what a one! The poet Chesterton's phrase "The legend of an epic hour'' from The Napoleon of Notting Hill fits him precisely. Tendulkar is more properly The Napoleon of Centurion, a ground that ought to have a memorial to his deeds but before he raced to that magic score against Pakistan he had already made this tournament his own. He seems to have realised quicker than most that the old tactic of a 15-over bash at the top of the innings would not apply against the white ball on these sluggish South African pitches.

Sixty runs has been the mean average for the overs of field restriction in this event and that is how Sachin went about scoring his runs. How right he was too.By the time the preliminary matches had been completed, after 24 days of controversy and confusion, Tendulkar stood head and shoulders above the rest. Remember Shane Warne's departure under the shadow of a drugs charge, Rashid Latif's threat to sue, New Zealand's decision to drop out of the match in Nairobi, England's long battle to have their Zimbabwe match moved to South Africa, arguments about the failure to post four fielders in the ring, the ban on Waqar Younis for bowling beamers, Pakistan's fight during a football game, South Africa's inability to interpret the Duckworth-Lewis rules. The stories are endless. Happily, they are all forced into the shadow by Tendulkar's dynamic batting. As the preliminary matches ended his statistics took the breath away.

He began on the fourth day of the World Cup with 52 from 72 balls off Holland; a pipe-opener that went almost unnoticed as the host South Africa led by Shann Pollock slaughtered Kenya. (If only we had known then that Kenya were not the mugs of the competition but the first round heroes; would we not at this moment be sitting on our own Caribbean island, soaking up the sun and wondering how we might spend our ill-gotten gains.)



From that moment he made a steady progress of sizeable scores: 36 off 59 against Australia, 81 off 91 against Zimbabwe, 152 off 151 versus Namibia, 50 from 52 against England and finally, gloriously, 98 from 78 balls delivered by Pakistani bowlers brought victory and a certain place in the Super Sixes. In total six innings, 469 runs, at 78.19 with a century and four fifties ? not to mention a strike rate of 93.80 ? meant that as the teams regrouped for the next stage it was being called Tendulkar's Tournament. When we set his last few weeks in context we are not disappointed. Overall in World Cups Tendulkar has played 27 innings in 28 matches, been not out three times and scored 1,528 runs with that 152 not out against hapless Namibia his highest score. He averages a colossal 63.67, he scores at 88.63 for each 100 balls he faces and he has four hundreds and 10 fifties.

Surely there is another World Cup in his life which means that one day he will retire - yes, even gods have to put their feet up at some stage in their lives ? with figures beyond the dreams of youngsters starting on their one-day careers. Just as a reminder, Tendulkar has played 309 one-day games, batted 300 times, scored 12,015 runs with his highest score an undefeated 186, an average of 44.50, 34 centuries and 60 fifties. He collects those runs at 86.43 runs each 100 deliveries. I will throw in his Test statistics just to show what a big man lies inside that chunky body. In 105 Tests he has batted 169 times, scored 8,811 runs, including 31 centuries and 35 fifties at an average of 57.59.

So as the preliminary matches in the 2003 World Cup ended, Tendulkar had scored 20826 international runs and 65 international centuries and, not just in the opinion of the sub-continent, was sitting so high on Mount Everest that his rivals appeared to be making their way through the foothills. And, even in this World Cup, there is so much more to come. Perhaps even success for India if the rest of the side can back up that great man's towering success. The figures are not as impressive but he bowls and fields as enthusiastically as he must have done in his teen years when he set out on this great career in the rough grounds of Mumbai. He has captained India too and one day he may do so again.


So thank heavens for Tendulkar. He may be a millionaire many times over and he might, if he chose, retire and live in luxury for the rest of his days.But the best of this extraordinary cricketer is that, having played all the matches on the calendar, he rises every morning keen to play, looking forward to carrying that hefty bat to the middle and certain, as he has every right to be, that he can make even more runs.

Portrait Of A Brat

WHEN Atul Ranade was sent to Junior KG for no fault of his, he chose to sit behind someone whose flowing long locks caught his eye. In a bout of elementary heterosexuality, he thought it was a girl. "But it turned out to be a boy and that too a very strong boy," he recalls. The muster called him Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Those were the days when he was shorter than the stumps, when he had his own method of communicating with weaker peers and that was, "bashing them up for no reason". One day, when he was in the second standard, as a part of his daily drill, he hit an erring schoolmate. And that boy, it turned out, was two years his senior. The humiliation did not go down well in the stunned fourth grade. And by evening a syndicate of eight-year-olds with an attitude that the principal would not have thought highly of, waited by the gate for retribution.

"They were waiting but somehow he escaped. I don't know how," says Ranade, the mystery still lingering somewhere in the eye.

He was very shrewd." He was gifted with talents that seemed to be obsolete, as the human society had moved away from its tribal roots. Ranade remembers a game in which a boy carried another on his back. Now this boy had to nudge other similar units of two and throw them off balance. "Sachin had this knack of shoving people with his shoulders. Anyone who paired with him would win." Back in Sahitya Sahawas, where Sachin lived with endearingly cultured parents and siblings, a pleasant life was taking form. But in any such pleasant domestic setting there is a mandatory gutter and in such gutters there are bound to be fish. Sachin's penance for mugging weak individuals seemed to be picking up fish from this gutter and giving them a new life in a bottle of municipality water. "He had this black fish, I remember, which he had taken from the gutter," says photographer Avinash Govarikar who has been a neighbour for life. "He was a very tender person. But he was always fascinated with power, speed and things like that." When a new recruit joined the gang, among the primary information that Sachin wanted to gather was whether 'this boy' could hit 'that boy'. But, though little boys were not included, other organic compounds like pups and cats got Sachin's sympathy and care.

Govarikar remembers a day, when the boys surveyed Sachin longer than necessary. Someone had cut his hair short. The flowing locks were gone. "He looked so different all of a sudden," Govarikar says. It's still not clear whether the decision to trim the hair was taken democratically or some elder in the house decided to put hygiene before fashion, but in a final analysis, Sachin now thought he looked like McEnroe. The boys' circle agreed.

The God Of Big Things

The personal and private side of Sachin Tendulkar is as fascinating and inspiring as his very high profile public life. H Natarajan dwells deep to present the human side of India’s national treasure. It’s a story based on the writer’s interactions with Tendulkar and with those associated with the player over the years.


Sahitya Sahawas, a co-operative housing society of writers in the western suburbs of Bandra, about six kms from Mumbai's famed Shivaji Park, boasts of respected names in Marathi literature like Gangadhar Gadgil, Arvind Gokhale, VP Kale, KJ Purohit, Shrinivas Bhange, Vrinda Karandikar, MV Rajadakshya and Vijaya Rajadakshya.

A stone's throw from Sahitya Sahawas is Patrakar Nagar, residence to some household names in Indian journalism. And not very far away from the two societies, is a modern fortress housing firebrand politician Bal Thackeray.

Amid these celebrated names was a cultured, middle-class household. The head of this family, Prof Ramesh, was a gold-medal winning Marathi literature professor and poet. His eldest son, Nitin, also became a poet and won the state government’s literary award for his first book. But it was the youngest of the professor’s four children who, says Nitin, “needed constant attention from elders in the family.”

``As a child, my kid brother would spend the entire day on the play ground and would hate coming home for his noon meals and nap. He was very difficult to handle at times. Sometimes my grandmother or mother would tie one of his legs to a wooden bench and attend to their house work, like of Bal Krishna!''

Even before he dropped out of college in pursuit of non-academic excellence, the boy had raised visions of becoming an icon and in the years to come attained Demi-God status. Amitabh Bachchan joined in the hosannas to say: “Sachin (Tendulkar) is the heartbeat of our nation. The country breathes every time he goes out to play and when he is out, the country stops breathing.”

Humility and credibility have remained Tendulkar’s strongest allies from his days as a non-entity to a super celebrity. I have watched him from close quarter right from his school days and never once I have seen him behave in an insensitive or arrogant manner. Now that is something not easy when you are a megastar.

A noted cricket columnist compared Tendulkar with Brian Lara: “One has his head high in the clouds, the other has his feet firmly planted on ground. While Lara has acquired for himself a swanky nine-bedroom luxury abode in Trinidad, adorned with marble staircase and a bat-shaped swimming pool, Tendulkar, international cricket's biggest money-spinner, lives in a modest two-bedroom house.”

Of course, this was written before Tendulkar moved into a swank, spacious house quite late in his career. It’s perfectly alright for anybody to enjoy luxuries in life from legitimate labour, but what the writer was trying to convey was that despite earning enormous wealth Tendulkar continued to stay for years in the same middle-class environment.

Nitin, the eldest of the Tendulkar brothers, gave me an insight into Sachin the person during a visit to his place a few years back: “He seeks blessings at the feet of all the family elders and Achrekar Sir before embarking on a tour. And he never forgets to buy things for every single family members when he returns back from the tour. Another endearing quality about him is that he never gets angry.”

One can vouch for that. Even when he is cocooned in the privacy of his hotel room with a `Do Not Disturb' board on his door, he has shown compassion than anger towards deadline-pressured journalists knocking at his door. He would be much happier if he were left alone by the media, yet few Indian superstars have been as helpful as him.

He has no known enemies in the media, but then he has not cultivated favourites either. To those who have offended him by their writings, his philosophy is simple: ``Pressmen too are entitled to having their bad days.''

Ajit Tendulkar (the brother who shaped Sachin’s cricketing fortunes) said in one of his meetings with me: ``I have never heard Sachin complain about anything written against him. He takes everything written about him in his stride – be it good or bad. He allows nothing to affect him.

If there is one thing he could buy with all his money, then it’s privacy. Taking the family out for a movie or for a dinner would mean running the risk of being mobbed. For a religious man like him, even going to the temples mean the focus shifting from the stone idols to the living idol! So visit to temples are at unearthly hours. He just cannot do simple things that most people take it for granted.

When he was still in the prime of his youth, he understood his social responsibility and said no to endorsing cigarettes, alcohol and pan masala when others of his age were making ‘style statements’ doing exactly the opposite. But then, while boys of his age were playing gully cricket, he was already rubbing shoulders with cricketing greats like Kapil Dev and Mohammad Azharuddin. It would be fair to say, Tendulkar missed a lot of things that boys do in their teenage years. As a result, the mental transition to manhood came about while physically he still looked an adolescent.

A common praise I heard from all those who have known him is that he has always showed concern for those not as fortunate as him. The Mumbai team got Reebok as their sponsors a few years back only because Tendulkar agreed, though the money offered for the entire team was one fourths of the price Tendulkar single-handedly commanded at that time. He agreed only because it would help the rest of his team-mates. And it’s not just fellow players. He paid his entire Ranji Trophy season's earnings to the Mumbai Cricket Association ground staff after Mumbai beat Punjab in the 1994-95 final.

There is unanimity that fame and success have not changed him one bit. This despite the fact that his single month's earnings - even very early in his career - far exceeded the amount most people get after slogging a lifetime. Even today, except for his passion for luxury cars and fast driving, his interests are like any other middle class person – music, family, friends and good food.

Though he is a very private person by nature, he is not a recluse. He is fun-loving when and where he wants to be. “In the dressing room, at times he is like a schoolboy when he is with Vinod (Kambli). They keep pulling each other's legs,” says Balwinder Sandhu.

Of course, Kambli has remained one of his soul mates since his Sharadashram school days. “He is the first guy I talk to anything important about my cricketing, personal or private life,” Kambli had told me once about his closest buddy. “I will never forget the happiness on his face when I and Ajay (Jadeja) join the team in Australia for the 1992 World Cup. (The team that had stayed back after the Test series against Australia). It was around 12.30 at night when we arrived in the team hotel. And there was Sachin waiting for me, greeting me with a warm hug. He knew I would make it for the World Cup.”

The concern and love that Kambli talks kept ringing in my ears everytime I spoke to somebody known to Tendulkar. Coach Ramakant Achrekar said: “It was Sachin who was instrumental in the success of my two benefits. He is very big-hearted and distributes among his team-mates gifts showered on him. He has never forgotten the values and upbringing inculcated in him by his parents.”

As Ajit Tendulkar explained: ``Our parents gave us the liberty to do what we want. But we ensured that we did not breach the trust reposed on us. Even when the decision was made to change Sachin's school from New English (Bandra) to Shardasharam, my dad spoke to Sachin to know his feelings even at that young age.''

Tendulkar’s decision to be largely private, soft-spoken and non-demonstrative has meant many of his inspiring qualities do not get the attention that it deserves. Prof Ratnakar Shetty told me how upset Tendulkar was to see the Indian flag hung upside down during India’s 1997 tour of Sri Lanka. Tendulkar, Shetty added, not only called the liaison officer and saw to it the mistake was quickly rectified but also asked him how he would have felt to see the Sri Lankan national flag in such a position.

Photographer Pradeep Mandhani reiterates Tendulkar’s patriotism: “Barely two hours after landing in Johannesburg on the 1992-93 tour to South Africa, the team was to visit Tolstoy Farm, Mahatma Gandhi’s first Satyagrahi Commune founded in 1910. It was situated 35 kms from Jo’burg and most of the Indian players showed little interest, longing to rest in the hotel after the long flight. But Tendulkar, still a teenager, looked keen and hungry to learn more about Gandhi. His volley of questions to the guide reflected his national pride.”

Another journalist friend, Joseph Hoover, recalls a casual conversation he had with Tendulkar on the 1997 tour of Pakistan led. “I suggested to Sachin to do something for the less fortunate of the society. He instantly agreed and asked me my plans; I had none as it was a casual remark. But within minutes he phoned Meerut and arranged for bats to be sent to Bangalore which were to be signed by players and later auctioned. Thanks to his initiative and the enthusiasm of the Indian team, an auction of cricketing equipment donated by players was held the following year and the proceeds went to street children in Mumbai (Apnalaya) and a home for the blind and another the leprosy afflicted in Bangalore. All this from a casual talk.”

Tendulkar’s concern for terminally-ill children is especially pronounced. He does not like to put off any meetings when they want to meet him, even when doctors assure him that there is no immediate threat to their lives. He even keeps in touch with their families. Of course, he hates talking about it.

He shows similar concern for fellow players. Beneficiaries in India often suffer when players don’t turn up after promising to participate in their benefit games, but Tendulkar has never been accused of letting down any player. He is aware of his magnetic powers, having seen spectators in thousands heading for the exit the moment he is dismissed.

Says TA Sekhar: “There was much hype in the media when Sachin had become the first overseas player to be signed for Yorkshire. He had promised that he would play my benefit, but I feared that his star appeal would be missing. It would have been a huge blow for me. When I rang up Sachin, he replied: ‘Don’t worry, when I give my word I honour it. I have made it clear before signing the contract with Yorkshire that I have a commitment to play a benefit and I cannot let down the beneficiary.’ Sachin kept up his word.”

Tendulkar’s public reputation is such that when he was accused of ball tampering, the entire nation rose in protest. NKP Salve, former Union Minister and a past president of the BCCI, echoed the sentiments of the masses when he said: “Sachin cannot cheat. He is to cricket what (Mahatma) Gandhiji was to politics. It’s clear discrimination.” The ICC were forced to explain that Tendulkar’s only mistake was removing grass from the ball without informing the umpires, “which is very different from ball tampering”.

One of the biggest factors that vouch for his credibility was at the height of the match-fixing scandal it was said that the betting mafia would not fix odds till Tendulkar was dismissed.
Tendulkar is unquestionably one of the all-time greats of the game, but what boggles the mind is the fact that, despite the surrealistic fame and trappings of money, the values and humility inculcated by his parents have remained intact. The middle class roots of the Tendulkars are very strong. Sachin’s mother Rajini continued to be an LIC employee long after her son became cricket’s Bill Gates.

Tendulkar may have made the transition from Bandra East to the upper crust Bandra West in a building that also houses another high-profile celebrity - Aishwarya Rai. But East or West, “the greatest living Indian”, as Bishan Bedi once lauded Sachin, remains still unspoilt, uncorrupted and unassuming as ever.

Yuvraj Singh Sachin Dravid

Sachin Tendulkar Unveils his Madame Tussauds Wax Statue

38th Test century

Melbourne, Jan 4: Sachin Tendulkar slammed his 38th Test hundred taking Indian total past 400 runs against Australia.
India were 466 for 7 in their first innings in reply to Australia's 463 on the third day of the second Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).

Tendulkar also completed 2000 Test runs against Australia. This is Tendulkar’s eighth century against Australia. Last time when Tendulkar played at the SCG, he scored an unbeaten 241.

Harbhajan is not out on 62.

Yuvraj Singh (12) was out leg before to Brett Lee. Sourav Ganguly, resumed his overnight innings at 21 and scored a quick fifty in just
68 balls.

Ganguly fell to Brad Hogg on 67. Ganguly and Tendulkar scored 108 runs for the fourth wicket.

Last Test between India and Australia at the SCG ended in a draw after India made 705-7.

Tendulkar scored an unbeaten 301 runs across two innings. (ANI)

sachin and dravid

The five ageing leaves of Indian cricket: Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Kumble. Five leaves in autumn, braving the winds of change that are blowing. Look! Two of them are falling. Oh how graciously they fall. In this journey, so short, from the branch to the ground, how they wear a final beauty. And despite the terror of mixing with the earth, want that this last fall has all the grace of a flight!

Kumble’s 18-year-old journey came to an end at the Feroze Shah Kotla and Ganguly is bidding adieu at Nagpur as he follows suit, floating down gently, savouring every memory of a long life on a branch of Indian cricket. They have weathered storms of all kinds and have emerged scathed, tired, tested but ultimately, I’d like to believe, satisfied. It will take long to fill the gaps they have left and the branches look that much emptier and poorer by their absence.

In a few years, the remaining three will also be blown away and the branch will be bare. Today they are fighting hard, clinging on, and disproving their critics but some day they too will be done. Did you say then why fight at all? That it’s useless, futile? I know. But then, they don’t fight in the hope of success! No, no! It’s much more beautiful when it’s useless, when it’s futile like in the final scenes of “The Last Samurai”. Oh what a beauty there is in fighting a lost battle. There’s an inexplicable romance to sword-wielding, horse-riding samurais charging in an open field at a mechanised artillery regiment of the Imperial army.

It’s the same with the five veterans. They fought and they continue to do so because like the Japanese Samurai, they don’t know any other way.

I could put down the statistics of this fabulous quintet and extol their achievements. But what’s the use of numbers, and at this stage, does it even matter? Do we need numbers to know their worth? The only numbers that everybody mentions now are 38, 36, 35, 35 and 34. Numbers are like the milestones on their journeys. Mere indicators. It is the journey and the sights they have left us to behold that are worth looking at again and again. Journeys that we’ll never be tired of retracing and sights that have been imprinted in our minds to be projected over and over again – a desert-storm at Sharjah, a defiance at Lords, a flourish at the Eden Gardens, a determination at Antigua, a virtuoso display at Adelaide…

Three leaves in autumn. And a wind…

Retirement is a tough call to make and there is no such thing as the right time to retire. It is a personal and an emotional decision. Should Federer retire if he wins another Grand Slam and breaks Sampras’ record for most GS titles? He would have discovered his form all right but after the recent slump shouldn’t he understand that his days are numbered? But what if he has several more titles still left? Did Henin make the right choice? Shouldn’t Warne make a comeback? Except the men and women concerned, nobody can know, sometimes not even them. The fickle media definitely not.

Soon they will all leave. Dravid will go, followed by Laxman. And some fall day, Sachin too will take his bow and ageing, sepia-toned, will begin his journey. But somehow I can’t imagine his journey being a short graceful one from the branch to the earth below. I’d rather dream of him being a leaf carried away on some wind, twisting and twirling and flying in a graceful manner like a ballerina that leaps into the air seemingly defying gravity.

He would arguably be the last leaf. And unlike O.Henry’s short story, this would be one Last Leaf that will be hard to imitate, replicate, duplicate. No masterpiece, no chef-d’oeuvre can come close to this original. The final journey of this Leaf would leave in its wake many a dead fan of Indian cricket.

Does the picture require a caption?

And the day that happens, the Indian cricket team would be a pale spectre of its formal self. Much like the Australian team is today without Waugh, Mc. Grath, Warne and Gilchrist.

The passing of these leaves, would herald a winter in Indian cricket. A winter that would disprove the implied answer to Shelley’s line in Ode to a West Wind “If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Oh yes, this one Spring will be far, far behind…