Unlucky Tendlya

On November, 15, 2009 Sachin Tendulkar completed twenty illustrious years in international cricket. The hype and hoopla around the moment was visible and understandable.

Each and every newspaper, tv channel, radio station kept telling us about it. Leander Paes was made to remember that table tennis match he lost to Sachin a few years back, Bishen Singh Bedi decided to be sensible for once and praise the man, Amitabh Bachchan recounted all those occasions when he had to post-pone shoots to watch Sachin bat (really?). So on and so forth.

Did make one wonder, what if Sachin was not an Indian? Or, an Indian, who represented another country? Someone like Venkatraman Ramakrishnan or Dinanath Ramnarine if we were to strictly talk about cricket?

Well, it would have been disastrous for Indian cricket but surely better for Sachin.

Why? Because in that case he would have had the good fortune of playing against Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Ajit Agarkar, Dodda Ganesh, Abey Kuruvilla, David Johnson and the likes.

In the sixth one-dayer against Australia in Guwahati in the recently concluded seven-match ODI series (The Aussies won that match by six wickets to clinch the series 4-2), Sachin managed to score only 10 runs. But he still had a record against his name. Sachin became the first cricketer to amass 3000 ODI runs against Australia. In fact, he became the first cricketer to score more than 3000 runs in any format against any team in the world. Hopefully he would soon cross the mark against the Aussies in Test cricket too. He’s scored 2748 Test runs against Australia so far and the deficit of 252 runs is a matter of one Test match for an average Sachin and three for an off-colour Sachin.

Now, how many runs would a man score against the Srinath-Prasad-Agarkar combine if he succeeded in scoring close to 6000 international runs against the Mcgrath-Lee-Warne combine? We all know the answer.

Sachin has often been compared to some of his contemporaries (his contemporaries though include everyone from Dean Jones to Callam Fergusson). But while comparing others to Sachin, people conveniently forget that while Brian Charles Lara had the good fortune of playing against Sunil Joshi and Nilesh Kulkarni or conversely, of not playing against Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, Sachin had no such privileges. While Inzamam Ul Haq honed his batting skills against Harvinder Singh and Rahul Sanghvi, Sachin had to sweat it out against those who never bowled to Inzy in international cricket. Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed. Still, neither Lara nor Inzy managed to score as many international runs.

We all know that Sachin has scored close to 30,000 international runs (by the time this article is published, he in all probabilities would have crossed the 30,000 barrier as India would be playing against Sri Lanka). But I guess what makes this monumental milestone look even more unbelievable is the fact that he scored all those runs without facing a single delivery of Paras Mhambrey or Prashant Vaidya or Bhupinder Singh Senior.

What would have happened if Sachin wasn’t playing for India?

One, he probably would have scored another 30,000 runs against the ‘fearsome’ Indian bowlers.

Two, the Indian media would have had to give more space to Rahul Gandhi and LK advani.

A Timely Call

The day has finally come! Ah, those ugly on-side shots are gone! The fielding standard of the Indians are once again up to the mark! And oh yeah, of course, the captain won’t speak much! Even if he does it won’t make much sense.

Sourav Ganguly has decided to call it a day as far as international cricket is concerned. With that, a mysterious and one of the most colourful episodes of Indian cricket has come to an end. Mysterious because in spite of being the second highest run scorer for India in one-day cricket, in spite of being the most successful captain of India as far as Test wins are concerned and in spite of being the proud owner of 15 Test hundreds, he’s been at the receiving end of attacks from all quarters, the reasons best known to the attackers.

The senior-junior debate has been going on in Indian cricket for quite sometime now. While clubbing Sachin, Rahul, Kumble, Laxman and Dada together and calling them seniors or veterans is a politically correct move, one fails to understand why Sourav was always the prime target of everyone! The prodigal VVS Laxman has managed a meager 2338 runs from 86 ODIs at an average of 30.76 with 6 hundreds over a decade (he made his ODI debut against Zimbabwe in April, 1998) but he’s still a prodigy! Pundits never bothered to show us fans, the logic behind fielding a prodigy in only 86 ODIs in 10 years. One look at the video clippings of the famous final group league match against the Kangaroos at Sharjah in 1998 though exposes the prodigy. When Sachin was wrongly given out, India was agonizingly close to a memorable victory. But the prodigious Laxman struggled hard to get there without success. Still, he is a prodigy and the man who taught the toddlers to walk is a bad influence. Well, was. He won’t be corrupting the dressing room anymore.

It was interesting to see those reactions pouring in right after the announcement. Everyone from Javagal Srinath to Kiran More suddenly remembered what a great player Sourav Ganguly was! The same Kiran More, whose only claim to fame during his playing days was that he successfully instigated Javed Miandad once. The same Kiran More, who had announced in public that Sourav would never be called back to the Indian squad when he was the chairman of the selectors. That’s okay. If there is no better candidate than More to head the selection panel, then it does give him a right to speak. But what one fails to understand is what did he have against Ganguly? And whatever he had, where and how did that disappear the moment Sourav announced his retirement?

To Sourav’s credit, he’s decided to be the one to put an end to all the humiliation that he definitely didn’t deserve and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect! By announcing his retirement before the series, he’s made sure that the selectors would pick him for the last two Tests against the Aussies (the current squad is only for the first two) and he has now successfully pushed the ball to others’ courts. The first Test is over and the highest run-getter for India in that Test was Sourav Ganguly. It’s anybody’s guess what exactly would the other ‘seniors’ be going through right now. More importantly, what are the selectors thinking now? Anil Kumble has announced that the Bangalore Test against the Aussies was his last at home. So, a premature skipper’s cap for Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Tests? And what would be the future middle-order? Rahul Dravid in spite of his technical brilliance doesn’t justify the wall tag anymore and it’s clear that Sachin Tendulkar only has personal goals in mind at this point in time. Next is England at home in December. Doesn’t sound threatening considering the opponents and the venues. But permanent solutions will have to be found shortly. The one who would be gearing up to answer all those whom he had to ignore for so long is of course Sourav Ganguly. And we all know that he can speak. More fun in store for the Indian cricket administrators! Both on and off the field.