The Dhaka Test and the Matter of Tendulkar

It's hugely satisfying to see India rout a Test team. Before qualifying that with the almost-mandatory, 'even if it's only Bangladesh', every Indian fan should pause and candidly answer a simple question: were you expecting to destroy Bangladesh so comprehensively before the Test series began, or did you, after the World Cup, feel vaguely anxious about what might happen? My answer is that I expected us to beat Bangladesh but I didn't expect that on the third day of a Test we'd win by an innings and more than two hundred runs. I didn't know that we had the bowling attack for it. We batted really well: I still think Laxman should be playing but the team Dravid selected has done the job it was given. Ganguly got a hundred in the first Test and it's hard to argue with runs on the board.

I just hope we don't build on this for England. Because if Dravid decides to stay with five batsmen in England, he can't, after this performance, pick Laxman for the first Test and Jaffer, Karthik, Dravid, Tendulkar plus Ganguly and Dhoni would be an iffy line-up against the moving ball and short-pitched bowling. Lots of people have written in to point out that Ganguly did well against an all-pace attack in South Africa and so he did. He has earned his place in the team…at No.6. I don't want him walking in against Harmison and Flintoff at the fall of the fourth wicket, specially if Dhoni's in next. Dhoni's a splendid player in sub-continental conditions but he has yet to show us that his home-made brutality travels well. Besides, I'm not sure that India's dominance in this Test match has much to do with a five-man attack. Zaheer and Kumble between them have done the business as so often before. I can't see that the exclusion of Ishant Sharma would have made much difference to our fortunes in the Mirpur Test. Footnote: given that Karthik can't catch anything without gloves on, Laxman in the slips in seaming conditions would be more than useful.

I notice that cricket reporters on web sites and newspapers (and not a few of the comments in response to the last post) are 'perplexed', 'baffled' and 'worried' by Tendulkar's strike-rate. The conclusion is a) that Tendulkar is batting for individual milestones, not for the team and b) that he's past his sell-by date. Sanjay Manjrekar had a piece in the May issue of Cricinfo Magazine where he observed "…Indian players have a tendency to overstay their welcome. Kapil Dev, with due respect, clearly robbed India of two good years of cricket from the young Javagal Srinath…There is a fear that a great cricketer can never be replaced. But didn't Tendulkar replace Sunil Gavaskar adequately in a matter of two years?" You could be forgiven for thinking that Manjrekar's hinting rather broadly that it's time to send Tendulkar on his way, but even if that's not what Manjrekar meant, from the evidence of public comment over the last couple of days, there are lots of fans and journalists who think Tendulkar's a liability.

I think they're daft. On the matter of Tendulkar thwarting the team interest by scoring too slowly, it's worth remembering that India scored over six hundred runs at four runs an over in less than two days and there was enough time after the declaration for Zaheer to wreck the Bangladeshi top order. There's a difference between a proper nostalgia for a younger Tendulkar who took attacks apart and the unlovely, irrational instinct to savage a great player because he has been diminished by time. Yes, Tendulkar isn't the batsman he was and his decline is the more poignant for having been accompanied by a change of style: a great attacking batsman has become a nudging accumulator. But I suggest that till we find a young batsman who can nudgingly accumulate at the same rate as Tendulkar does now, we leave him be. I don't think Suresh Raina or Yuvraj Singh are credible rivals for his batting spot. In the South African series Tendulkar was well below his best but it's worth remembering that he played rather better than his captain did.

I'm not surprised by Tendulkar's attritional methods and his determination to get his hundreds. Having been slandered by gossip (the rumours about his subversion of Dravid's authority), dissed by Chappell, reprimanded by the board for speaking out of turn and excluded from the Bangladeshi ODIs as punishment for unspecified 'sins', he could be forgiven for thinking that he had been put on notice, that given the opportunity the time wasn't far off when the selectors and the team management might 'rest' him for Test matches. Having struck two centuries in successive Tests he's achieved two things: One, a stay on the popular Manjrekar Prescription (viz. old guys should be recycled) and two, he's boosted his own morale as a batsman. For those of us who wish the team well this is good news at the start of a busy Test season.