Tendulkar learns to live with the Bradman image (23 Apr 1997)

Wednesday 23 April 1997

Tendulkar learns to live with the Bradman image

By Mark Nicholas

IT WAS raining in Guyana at the weekend, much as it has done most days, and the Test match between the West Indies and India was abandoned for the day. Deep in the servants` quarters of the Pegasus Hotel, Sachin Tendulkar, the 23-year-old captain of India, was playing table tennis with his mates.

He outwitted them all, even the resilient Navjot Singh Sidhu, serving with the magical flick of an Oriental wrist and smashing with the easy grace of a dancer. Most of all he giggled with his success and cursed at his error, much like any kid. Which is of course what he is, or would be given the chance.

Amazing really. Not so amazing, perhaps, as that business by the 21-year-old American Mr Woods, but amazing all the same, for on Monday, just a week after Tiger`s triumph, Tendulkar completed his 53rd Test match. I only tell you this because it is one more than Sir Donald Bradman played in his whole, achievement-strewn lifetime and recently Sir Donald said that Tendulkar was the modern batsman who most mirrored him.

By this one imagines Bradman meant that Tendulkar was fast to pick up length and particularly to play the pull stroke, a sure sign of a keen eye, straight in defence and equally balanced and competent from either foot.

Whatever he meant, it is quite a compliment. The legendary Australian made 29 Test match hundreds and averaged as good as twice as many as the Indian, who has made 11 Test hundreds - with another 11 one-day hundreds to boot - and averages more than 50.

Before this tour to the Caribbean that average had slipped to below 50 for the first time in years. How odd it is to talk in "years" about the career of the still boyish, earstudded Tendulkar. But years it is, seven of them, since he began in Test matches and Wasim Akram promptly hit him on the nose on a bouncy green top in Karachi. India were 37 for four and losing the series against the archest enemy when the 16-yearold hit the deck.

Javed Miandad bent sympathetically over the boy and told him that the injury was serious and he had better go off; Imran Khan nodded gravely in agreement. The boy knew about Javed, the cunning, and Imran, the warrior, and after shaking himself down got a plaster for the blood and made 50-odd. India saved the series. Amazing really.

Now that Sachin the bat is also Sachin the captain he is probably the most famous and revered man in India. This makes him the public property of hundreds of millions of cricket fanatics, but he still manages to live privately in glamorous Bombay with his doctor wife and friend from childhood, Anjali.

He is the highest earner in cricket with endorsements for the next five years worth more than an estimated 6.25 million but he is not greedy; rather he knows his value and illustrates it with his play. Not he admits, that it is becoming any easier.

"Captaincy is a huge responsibility, perhaps even more pressure than I first thought. Cricket is like a religion in India and I`m like any debutant again, taking time to settle in my new appointment, dealing with nerves. I`m learning to relax myself and must set batting and captaincy apart to achieve my own targets," he says, having nicked the ping pong 21-17 in the third against Sidhu.

Back in his alarmingly pokey hotel room, he adds that he is consumed by the need to win and to quench the critics who swoop on failure. "This is the way of the modern game, with its high expectations. Yes, sometimes I feel too much of the responsibility to win the game on my own, but we have a talented young side who are already taking some of the pressure from me." He constantly reminds himself that the highs and lows of cricket are sudden and extreme and that it is dangerous for him to become too intense.

Sunil Gavaskar, Tendulkar`s long-time mentor and early hero, thinks that captaincy is bringing the best from his batting, that he is choosing his strokes more carefully and though he has had a relatively lean run of late his play will become more dependable. "Possibly, I hope that it is so. I think the reason I am batting less freely is that recently we have played on slower tracks, except in South Africa, and also that I have come to the crease when we have been in trouble so I`ve tried to keep my head down and apply myself more," comes the measured, almost stately, response.

There is plenty of the statesman in Tendulkar, who was enthralled by the success of Bangladesh in the recent ICC Trophy and not surprised to hear of the wild celebrations. "We must definitely continue to look to globalise cricket, which is thriving in world terms at present," he adds. "Look what the World Cup did for Kenya, let alone for Sri Lanka, and imagine what more frequent World Cups, perhaps one every two years so long as it was staged properly, would do for the awareness of the game in minority countries and for making money to promote it."

And a world Test match championship? "I haven`t thought about that so much as I have the need for a more defined structure to Test match cricket. At the moment it is non-stop, country to country, hotel room to hotel room. Quality is more important than quantity. Quantity hinders consistency and encourages players to go through the motions.

"A world championship is fine if everyone plays everyone, everywhere, home and away, but I think they have to be threematch series, not one-offs which don`t necessarily reflect the better team, so it would take some time to complete."

India have packed 12 Test matches into the short Tendulkar reign as well as a mass of one-day internationals. Every one has been televised, intruded upon by that most revealing eye. Does that get to players and wear them down?

"I think players know where their best earnings come from so they don`t complain," he says. "No, more I wonder if the ICC code of conduct is a little strict when one considers the pressure on players now which is highlighted by TV. We all make mistakes, umpires even, and I think the match referees should allow for human error and the natural reactions to adversity which are a part of life as much as cricket. Punish players for bad attitudes or for abusing the image of the game, but not for sudden moments of disappointment which are often exaggerated."

He is strongly in favour of good match referees and thinks they could contribute more than they do. "Issues such as bowling outside leg stump into the rough could be judged as within the spirit of game or not by the referee. I have no problem with the tactic if it is employed to take wickets, but when it is purely negative it can`t be in cricket`s interest."

Wise words, indeed, from a bright young mind; a mind, incidentally, that Gavaskar believes will one day be remembered as having made as great a contribution to the thinking, the policies and the direction of the game as Bradman himself.

For now, though, it is about winning matches, making runs and the permanently hyped-up battle with Brian Lara to be top dog. "I enjoy it, it`s healthy to have challenges, but you can`t judge these things in the short term," says Tendulkar. "Players should be judged over their whole careers, over 15 years, which brings the true perspective."

"Quite right," says Dr Ali Bacher, the managing director of South African cricket, who watched at close hand while Tendulkar led his first tour abroad over Christmas and the New Year.

"All I can tell you about his batting at the moment is that he`s the nearest thing I`ve seen to Barry Richards. He`s an incredible man with a brilliant cricket brain and is the best kind of honest and attractive ambassador for cricket in general and for his country." Thank you doctor, that`ll do nicely.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)