Is Sachin coming? Team Lara wants to know

The thick rain cover over the Sabina Park stadium is not the only reason why sunny Jamaica’s frowning. Team India is here, but without the man they were all waiting for—Sachin Tendulkar.

The thick rain cover over the Sabina Park stadium is not the only reason why sunny Jamaica’s frowning. Team India is here, but without the man they were all waiting for—Sachin Tendulkar.

From the legendary Colin Croft to skipper Brian Lara, former Windies one-day star Ricardo Powell and even Harish V, a Hyderabad techie who’s hopped over from New Jersey, they all hope the Mumbai maestro will make it in time for the Tests starting June 2.

“It would be nice to have him here. He’s among the best and it will be great if he is fit in time to tour,” says Brian Lara. “It is sad to see the way injuries have dogged him but being the fighter that he is, there is enough chance that he will get himself going in time,” added Lara, responding to an e-mail.

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West Indies media manager Imran Khan says the home pacers have not counted out the possibility of bowling at Tendulkar—not yet. “They are preparing themselves at the prospect of bowling to him (Sachin) and are not really thinking about him not coming,” says Khan.

“So when is he coming?” booms a smiling Colin Croft at the stadium. That, of course, is the billion-fan question. After an initial no, Tendulkar’s comeback ride, from a shoulder surgery in March, has suddenly picked up pace with the BCCI adding its spin to the suspense by postponing his fitness test from May 20 to “May 22 or 23”.

The buzz here is that Tendulkar, currently training at the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai, may be available for the Test series—or at least part of it—after he is cleared by his London surgeon Dr Andrew Wallance. The Mumbai maestro is scheduled to reach London on May 24 from where, according to the BCCI, he may “proceed for the West Indies.”

Back in Kingston, which will also host the last Test starting June 30, Ricardo Powell, the one-time one-day star, now “taking a break from cricket”, agrees that Tendulkar’s presence would add that edge to the series. “He should make it,” says Powell.

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“For us, he is always a huge star,” says US-based Harish, who has come here to catch the cricket with a bunch of friends. “Unfortunately for us, he couldn’t make it for the one-day series.”

This sense of anticipation is quite understandable—after all, Tendulkar has played only 10 Tests and six one-dayers so far in the region. And what’s still talked about here is the 2002 Test series when Tendulkar began with a bang at the Queen’s Park Oval (117), fumbled against left-armer Pedro Collins to log a series of zeros and came back strongly in the end with a half-century (86).

But those who know the 33-year-old well enough would also remember that heartbreak Test of 1997 at the Kensington Oval when India, under his captaincy, folded up for 81 while chasing fourth innings target of 161. To this day, some former players say, they have not seen Tendulkar as livid as he was that evening in Barbados.