Gilchrist-gate

Adam Gilchrist, for so long a knight amongst cricketers, must know he8217;s got this one wrong. Within hours of the release of excerpts from his new book...

Adam Gilchrist, for so long a knight amongst cricketers, must know he8217;s got this one wrong. Within hours of the release of excerpts from his new book, he reportedly contacted Sachin Tendulkar to clear the air. The 8220;four8221; controversial pages of his new autobiography, True Colours, dwell on Tendulkar8217;s alleged flip-flop on the evidence he gave in the Harbhajan Singh-

Andrew Symonds 8220;Monkey-gate8221; in last winter8217;s Sydney Test, and on Tendulkar8217;s reported absence at post-match dressing-room handshakes after an India loss.

These are, arguably, little matters that could be resolved by just a line or two in clarification from Tendulkar. But the Gilchrist book highlights a curious aspect of the Australian cricketers8217; self-portraits through memoir. They appear to choose an Indian cricketer as a counter-point, and attack him. Steve Waugh did so with Sourav Ganguly, making the absurd contention that his bickering over pitches amounted to match-fixing. Waugh and Ganguly were men of similar roles in their teams. And Gilchrist in a way was a man seen to be in spirit less partisan than his team-mates, the man who walked, the man who 8212; like Tendulkar does 8212; adhered to a higher sport ethic.

This is grist for the pop psychologist8217;s theories. But it does make one wonder. Why don8217;t Indian cricketers write their own stories? But even if they demur, let8217;s remember that Tendulkar has been better profiled in perhaps the only remarkable piece of fiction with walk-on parts for South Asian cricketers: Romesh Gunesekera8217;s The Match. That book turned on an episode in a Sri Lanka-India match at the Oval in 2002, when a Tendulkar cut stroke injured a pigeon and set up one of cricket8217;s most touching moments.