Foiled fantasy

Most cricket lovers have a recurring dream: their team is losing a Test match at Lord’s (or Eden Gardens or elsewhere). But they come out to bat, and take the game by the scruff of its neck. Beginning with a cover drive Walter Hammond would have been proud of, they go on to hit the dangerous fast bowler over his head into the stands.

The details might vary, but the result is the same - they make a spectacular century in about an hour, and take their team to an incredible win. As the nation exults, they remain modest sportsmen just doing their job.

But it is not just those of us whose fantasies mock our abilities who have such dreams. International players do too. It is a feeling that unites the spectator and the performer, for after all, many spectators live through the performers. When Rahul Dravid hits a boundary, he does it for them, when Anil Kumble takes a wicket he is doing it for those beyond the boundary too. So much for the cricket romantic.

On the final day of the Bangalore Test, one man was given the opportunity to play out our collective fantasies. India’s target of 299 in 83 overs was difficult; history, geography (the state of the wicket), psychology (the continued failures of a once-great middle order), economics (a bad loss might have seen mass changes and loss of income), common sense (this was the first Test of a four-match series and the team might never recover), logic (India’s recent pathetic fourth innings record), the weather (bad light or rain was imminent) were all against India.

And yet.

What would we have given for a Sachin Tendulkar to have taken the game by the scruff of its neck and shaken it up? Here was contemporary cricket’s greatest batsman, on contemporary cricket’s greatest stage. What an opportunity to shake off the recent failures, what an opportunity to save the careers of his colleagues, what an opportunity to stamp his name on a memorable Test win! Great players have to perform great deeds, rising above the conditions that would defeat the lesser players.

It is unfair, I know, but fantasies don’t have to be fair or logical. The pitch was not an easy one to bat on, but it wasn’t impossible, and here was a bunch of four players who between them had made 21,576 runs in the 76 Tests they had played together, more than half of India’s 40,966 runs. There was pressure on them to quit, pressure to score runs, pressure to justify their places, pressure to keep running so they would remain in the same place.

Yet one Tendulkarine innings would have drowned all cricketing sorrows. Had Tendulkar carried India to a win, he would have gone past Brian Lara’s record, he would have been returned by a grateful nation to the pedestal from which he has recently slipped. Wasn’t that motivation enough?

In practical terms, I suppose India could have held back Rahul Dravid as an insurance policy, asked the openers to get off to a flier and paved the way for the middle order, now given a chance to erase the memories of Sri Lanka with one calculated effort.

Sadly, despite this fantasy element, sport does not work that way. There is national pride to be considered, the loss of interest (and therefore money) in a losing team and a whole lot of other elements to be considered before a team can take on a challenge unfettered.

For long now India have been content with the bird in hand and refused to speculate about those in the bush. This, I suppose, is the right and mature way. But for once, wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have seen a wrong and immature approach that might have led to victory?

After all, millions fantasise about scoring a century and taking India to a win, but only a few get the opportunity to do so.