Tendulkar and the ‘clutch’ question
On the eve of the semi-final between India and Pakistan, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan analyses the question that fans and critics of Sachin Tendulkar spend endless hours debating: Has Tendulkar failed to seize the moments that matter most?
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
On the eve of the semi-final between India and Pakistan, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan analyses the question that fans and critics of Sachin Tendulkar spend endless hours debating: Has Tendulkar failed to seize the moments that matter most?
He also concurred that this line of reasoning would not have cropped up at all had India won the Chennai Test against Pakistan in ’99 or the World Cup final in ’03; that the discussion would have had a different hue if India had won the Barbados Test in ’97, the Champions Trophy final in Nairobi in 2000 and the Test series in Australia in ’08.
Now here’s my theory on this line on criticism: Had Tendulkar played in an earlier era, these discussions would have simply not come up. Not many dwell on Sunil Gavaskar’s clutch moments, simply because India weren’t expected to win in that era.
Tendulkar has been part of Indian teams that have approached the threshold, slipped miserably on it before eventually shedding the monkey off their back. So unfortunately every India slip-up has been a Tendulkar-could-have-taken-us-home moment.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo