Mukul Kesavan, in his eminently readable book on cricket called Men in White, has a chapter devoted to Sachin Tendulkar, that like the rest of the book has as many gems as your above-average tiara. Samplings:A century by him is an odd mixture of calm and storm. His greatest innings, of course, specially his hundreds in one day matches, are simply single long violent spasms. They have become rarer, those extended bursts of berserker brilliance, because he is too much the Bombay batsman to be prodigal. So sometimes you will see him curb his shot making, mainly in the interests of the team, but also because he wants to prove to himself and his audience that he can play with puritanical self-denial.
That passage could have been written after Mukul watched Tendulkar in action at the Oval yesterday, as could this one:
Right now, Tendulkar is a great batsman who doesn't scare the opposition. It is as if the fact that he sees the ball so early has begun to work against him: he has almost too much time to play the ball and he uses it to think and fret instead of using it to attack the bowling. There is a tense premeditation to his play these days that is different from the calculated aggression we used to see earlier.
Exactly. And it is that aggression, that free-flowing player who can unveil the sort of shot that, in Mukul's words, make bowlers stop in their tracks and look at him as if he had grown an extra head, that we miss; that we sought for in vain through this series and most especially yesterday. On a deck that held few if any terrors, in conditions where even the normally cautious Rahul Dravid was inspired to come out and play like he was chasing a stiff one day target, Tendulkar went so far into his shell you feared that, like with the victims of the latest mining disaster, you would need an army expedition to dig him out of there.
Just every now and again, there would be a glimpse of what was possible -- an exquisite extra cover drive of the kind that was a staple during his pomp; a little romp down the wicket to loft Monty Panesar up and over the infield in the first over the bowler bowled to Tendulkar... little flashes, gone almost before they registered on your consciousness, like vagrant lightning on a summer's day.
You want to see the old Tendulkar, even when you know that batsman has moved into the realm of nostalgia.
By the way he is batting these days, Tendulkar has clearly made his choice; it is now our turn. We can mourn what has gone, and crib about a master blaster reduced to constant crawler, or we can chose to watch him, now, for his work ethic, for focus and determination, for the manner in which he is prepared to accept his demotion to the ranks of the mortals and to battle on regardless.
In his pomp, he warred on the opposition; in his twilight, he is now at war with himself; if we can bring ourselves to forget the past and focus on the here and now, there is a fascinating battle being played out for our edification.
Also read: The rise, fall and rise again of Zaheer Khan
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