Keeper of the flame

Passing on the mantle © Getty Images Enlarge

Like Sunil Gavaskar, his predecessor as the keeper of India's batting flame, it took Sachin Tendulkar just 119 matches to notch up his 34th Test century. But no-one, not even Gavaskar, has scaled such momentous heights while being subjected to such intense scrutiny, both from the media and millions of adoring supporters.

It hasn't been the easiest of years for Tendulkar, with a string of low scores following in the wake of the 241 not out in Sydney and the unbeaten 194 in Multan. Talk-show hosts with nothing better to do than boost ratings have picked his game apart, with asinine polls asking viewers whether the master was past his peak.

They were about five years too late. Tendulkar shone like the sun in the summer of 1998, when he almost single-handedly decapitated Shane Warne and the mighty Australians led by Mark Taylor. The peaks of excellence he scaled then were so enormous that they remain forever the preserve of a select few - Bradman, Headley, Trumper, Pollock, Hutton, Richards and Lara, to name just a magnificent seven. To expect any man to stay in that rarified environment for too long is like asking for the moon.

Even Bradman found it hard to match the 254 at Lord's, reckoned by many to be as perfect an innings as any ever played. And while Richards stroked many a masterpiece, few could live up to the majesty and insouciance of his 291 at The Oval in 1976. Similarly Lara, whose 400 and 375 will always play catch-up in the aficionado's mind to the scarcely believable 153 at Bridgetown that defied and defeated a great Australian team.

Tendulkar may be walking downhill, but as he showed at last year's World Cup and then again in Sydney earlier this year, he still operates at an altitude that leaves lesser mortals breathless. With age creeping up, and the reflexes slowing down - not to mention a catalogue of minor and not-so-minor niggles - he will invariably fail more often than he used to. Like Richards in his swansong years, there is a vulnerability there that you could never previously glimpse, and even raw talents like Mashrafe Mortaza can expose it.

But for all that, he still retains the ability to make you gasp, especially with the purity of his on-drives. And it was somehow fitting that Gavaskar was watching from his commentary perch less than a hundred yards away as the boy he anointed as his heir even before he had made his Test debut took that final step to join him atop the summit of batting achievement.

The writers and critics who prophesise with their pens - and TV cameras in this day and age - would do well to keep their eyes wide. If not, blinded by twisted agendas and TRPs, they might just miss the last chapter of what has undoubtedly been Indian cricket's most stirring saga.

Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Cricinfo.