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Journalism of Courage
On Saturday, December 10, precisely at 16:44:19 by one cricket writer8217;s watch, Sachin Tendulkar played off Chaminda Vaas to become holder of another cricket record. Thereupon, with two more balls still to be sent down in that over, the umpires signalled bad light, and Sachin8217;s celebrations began.
The imagery is so powerful that it invites exaggeration. There is Sachin on the brink of his 35th Test century, a record that had been designated as his alone ever since his middle-school 664-run partnership with Vinod Kambli in 1988. Seventeen years later, he gets it, a destiny once foretold now in his grasp. In relief, the bat, one of the heaviest in the game but as always wielded as lightly as a magician8217;s wand, is raised skywards. In confirmation, the elements make contact. Darkness buckets down. It removes the man and his moment from the drift of play. The closing minute, it says, must be Sachin8217;s. On the morrow the match may recommence. For now on this prematurely gloomy late Delhi afternoon, the game has been separated from its greatest son. Hold that chatter about victory targets. For a while just savour this number: one double-o.
It8217;s plain to see, but heartbreaking to articulate. Once Sachin8217;s performance used to be, in effect, India8217;s match report. Now it takes recourse to a statistic for him to leap off the scorecard. Once Sachin was our story, and the match incidental. Even now he is an obsession, but India nevertheless trot along, around him, on their Test exploits.
The popular narrative has been that it8217;s Sachin who has changed. He8217;s playing for records. He8217;s taking the risk 8212; and so the dash 8212; out of his batting. He is fretting, he is troubled by fading skill and wearying body. He is not enjoying himself. He has packed away his trademark shots 8212; those hooks and cuts 8212; and is nursing self-preservation.
Actually, it may be quite the opposite. It could be that Sachin has maintained such steadfast fidelity to an ambition, an ambition obtained from his earliest contract with the game, that it is he who is unchanged. Since that Test debut in 1989 8212; when Javed Miandad set himself up for derision ever thereafter by suggesting the Bombay boy had better put his pads back in the kit bag and go home to homework 8212; he has been striving to deliver on that early promise. That promise of success and achievement crafted in spite of everything, not the least being a team given to quick collapse.
Since that day, before the First Gulf War, before Mandal, before liberalisation, before the return of colas to India, before outsourcing, before match-fixing, it is the rest who have forgotten that earliest of contracts.
In this numbers game, in this chase for milestones, there8217;s an apt starting point. Go back to December 14, 1989. At Sialkot, in the last Test of that same debut series, another debutant, Waqar Younis, announces himself by bloodying Sachin8217;s nose. Sachin refuses to retire hurt, and goes on to make 57. He will later say, 8220;It didn8217;t feel nice, what with blood flowing from my nose, but I couldn8217;t leave, for the side was not doing well.8221;
The side did not do well far too often, through the nineties and well into the two-thousands. There was just Sachin. It sparked wild narratives. Didn8217;t you know, for instance, that when he went out to bat, he delivered India for the space of his innings from the debris of its failures? Sachin, by these theories, was the net between despair and freefall towards fatalism.
The Sachin effect would show up in the game in diverse ways. Take Chennai, January 1999. Set 271 to win by Pakistan in a particularly edgy bout of cricket diplomacy, India were well on their way for most of the last innings. Sachin was on 136, with 17 runs to get and four wickets in hand. Then, he succumbed to Wasim Akram, four more runs on the board, and it was all over for India.
Here8217;s a suggestion. When the spectators at Chepauk rose to applaud a Pakistani lap of honour, it was the majesty of that Tendulkar innings that kept their spirits up.
In Jamaica, May 2002, Sachin8217;s possibilities had quite a contrasting effect on his team8217;s spirits. India were targeting 408 for a series win. With Sachin around and in the eighties, the exacting Sabina Park spectators had hushed their sledging and their music. They knew they were already privileged to see Sachin in command, they reckoned he could take it away from the home side.
But Sachin8217;s team! They must have smelt the rain blowing in toward the Kingston harbour. But when Sachin fell for 86, they altered their airline bookings to guarantee five amongst them a flight out before scheduled close of play. The moment India folded, the rain came crashing down, and didn8217;t stop for days.
Soon it changed. India were rebranded. New India improvised a plan of action. A new generation had started drawing on professionalism and modern training. They spoke of inspiration from Sachin himself. India8217;s days out were now the sum of each individual8217;s contribution. Saurav Ganguly became the team8217;s mascot, he drilled his wards in the motivational gains from brash self-belief. Anil Kumble found company in influxes of bowling talent. Rahul Dravid gave of himself by accepting the one-day wicketkeeper8217;s gloves to allow for another batsman 8212; by many accounts, himself 8212; and gained the stamina for ever longer, ever more matchwinning innings. Now they played match to match, innings to innings, session to session.
And Sachin? Sachin remained a little boy lost. Lost in the magnificence of that early rendezvous with destiny. That rendezvous kept our faith in Indian cricket so surely that destiny8217;s arrival asks for a tougher tribute. It asks his countless celebrants to go soft on the platitudes and work out what Sachin lost on the field in stilling himself into that single-focused boy we once so wanted him to be.
