Sachin Tendulkar has scored more Test runs than anyone. To Greg Baum,
who has seen him stop trains in their tracks in India, he is the game’s secular saint
The two keenest appreciations of Sachin Tendulkar were made from vantage points that could not have been more opposite and together serve as an incontrovertible cross-reference to his greatness.
The first was Sir Donald Bradman’s famous remark to his wife during the 1996 World Cup that Tendulkar put him in mind of how he himself batted. The second is the widespread understanding in the cricket community that match-fixers did not bother to get on with their crooked business until Tendulkar was out; there is an anecdotal account of how Tendulkar once unknowingly ruined a fix by batting too blissfully well. It must be understood that neither reflection would have been made lightly. Sir Donald was not given to hyperbole or glibness. Nor would the fixers have bothered with throwaway lines.
Together, these tributes convey immutable impressions of Tendulkar that accord with less quantifiable, more aesthetic understandings of the glory of his batsmanship. Here is a man capable of changing the course of any game.
He was born with extravagant
talent but was also driven
and indefatigable
Here is a man incorruptible in the face of the temptations that so many of his peers could not resist. Outside the laws or outside the off stump he could not be lured. Here is a man not susceptible to human failing in any endeavour; a man not so much invincible as invulnerable.
Here is a man whose name is synonymous with purity, of technique, philosophy and image. If Ian Botham was the Errol Flynn of cricket, or Viv Richards the Martin Luther King, or Shane Warne the Marilyn Monroe, or Muttiah Muralitharan the Hobbit, Tendulkar is surely the game’s secular saint.
Right from the beginning, he appeared to be touched by divinity. He came among us as a boy-god, unannounced. He was 16 and was hit on the head in his first appearance but neither flinched nor retreated a step. Nothing thenceforth could harm him, temporal or otherwise. He was short and stocky like all the best and mop-topped and guileless to behold. He has scarcely changed since.
Tendulkar was born with extravagant natural talent but he was also driven and indefatigable. He came not from another dimension, nor the mystical east, but like all greats from the nets. When a boy he would bat from dawn to dusk and even a little beyond. By such dedication he came to understand intimately his own gift and at length to lavish it upon others.
His movements at the crease are small but exact. He said once that he did not believe in footwork for its conventional purpose because the tempo of Test cricket did not permit a batsman the textbook indulgence of getting to the pitch of the ball. Rather he thought of footwork as a means of balancing himself up at the crease so that each shot was hit just as he meant it. He scores predominantly through the off side, unusual for such a heavy run-maker, but of course he can play every shot.
Tendulkar’s method promotes an air of calm, reassurance and poise at the crease. Brian Lara’s batting was characterised by explosion and violence, Steve Waugh’s by grim resolve, Ricky Ponting’s now by his energetic purpose; but Tendulkar’s ways are timeless. His battles with Shane Warne, genius versus genius, were for the ages. It is said that the common element to concepts of beauty among all peoples and races is symmetry, a balance between all the parts. So it is with Tendulkar’s batting.
He is not watching them but
they are watching him.
Still he stands tall
How easily he carries the hopes and takes responsibility for the well-being of untold millions on that impossible subcontinent; in this, too, he is divine. All eyes are upon him, day and night, but no scandal has attached itself in his private life or in his cricket endeavours. Across the land he is the little man on the big posters and hoardings, creating a kind of reverse Big Brother effect; he is not watching them but they are watching him. Still he stands tall.
Sometimes petty criticism is made that he fails India in its hours of need but it is not borne out by the figures. He has made more than 80 international centuries and is not done yet.
When called upon, he also bowls intelligently, if sparingly. He is sure in the field. There is even about him, as there was about many saints, something of the ingénu. He was not a natural captain for the modern era because he can lead only by example. He does not have a charismatic presence in a cricket stadium but fills it in a different way, as the one certainty in a sea of doubt. Batting is the most fraught of sporting pursuits because even for the best the end is only ever one ball away. Tendulkar seems to turn that verity upon itself.
As Tendulkar put Bradman in mind of himself, so he puts others in mind of Bradman. Once I was on a night train winding down from Simla to Kalka that stopped halfway for refreshments at a station lit by flaming torches. On a small television screen wreathed in cigarette smoke Tendulkar was batting in a match in Mumbai. No one moved or spoke or looked away. The train was delayed by 20 minutes. Not until Tendulkar was done could the world resume its normal timetables and rhythms.
GREG BAUM is the chief sports writer for The Age in Melbourne