34 Not Out

But today was Sachin’s day. ‘‘This century is special’’, he later said, ‘‘because I was coming back from a bad injury. I’m still not 100 per cent pain-free.’’

Normally loath to discuss his condition in public, today Sachin revealed what it was like out there. ‘‘It was tough, I also had to play the ball and at the same time fight this pain. There are plenty of things that people don’t know, I was fighting against all those things. It’s never an easy task. It’s been a great challenge and quite satisfying,” he said in a subtle message to his critics.

Indeed it seemed at times to be a rewind to his heydays for there were flashes of Sachin Past, especially in his execution of the pull shot, once a favourite of his. He played the shot four times but, as he said, with gritted teeth. At other times in his six-hour unbeaten knock it was the New Sachin who played away from his body, edged, missed and fought his way. In fact he was even dropped twice when he had made 28 and 47 respectively. He also featured in a run-out with Gautam Gambhir.

All these upset him, as he admitted later, but there was a task to be done. The score was 68 for 3 when Ganguly joined him; by the time the skipper left, the game had effectively been taken away from the hosts.

The cover drive and the straight punch down the ground were flowing again from Tendulkar’s bat (which he changed once he touched 140). It was overall a good sign.

From 96 to No. 34, Tendulkar spent some nervous moments but eventually it took a sharp single to mid-on. Sachin, typically, raised his arms in joy, then looked up at the sky.

His teammates’ reactions were more exuberant. Harbhajan Singh, one of the last to come out of the change rooms before the moment, was the first to stand up and applaud; the rest of the squad, already assembled outside, followed in unison.

Upstairs in the commentary box, the only other member of Club 34 stood up while commentating to applaud the effort. At tea, Gavaskar walked down to the boundary ropes and gave him a hug. ‘‘He said, ‘It’s good to get to 34 but you should not stop here. Go further and further and get to 50’,’’ Tendulkar later revealed. So is that his next target? ‘‘I don’t want to say whether it is possible or not right now. It’s not that I’m going to go for 50 hundreds, I’m just going to go out there and play the way I’ve played.’’

It hasn’t been a very good year for Tendulkar. Or has it? This is his third big score of 2004, the others being 241 not out Down Under and 194 not out in Pakistan. Most batsmen would give their right arm for that statistic.