God, let Sachin get his 100th ton in Australia, please

The first day of a Test match in the crucible of cricket in India, the prospect of a ton of tons by Mumbai’s own Sachin Tendulkar, a sunny autumn morning, and emptiness in the stands. Even the West Indian opener Kraigg Brathwaite expressed surprise at the end of the opening day that Mumbaikars had not turned up in droves to see their favourite cricketer achieve his milestone.

All the stakeholders of the game should be worried about the state of Test cricket, and so it was even more galling to see the lifeless pitch doled out for this one. I asked Brathwaite at the post-match press conference if this was the easiest of the pitches they had encountered on the tour and he had no hesitation in agreeing; there was nothing in it for either pacers or spinners.

If the intention was to roll out a batting beauty for the much-awaited ton on home soil, it was just as well that the West Indies won the toss and batted first, because it would have been a travesty of a great milestone to get it in front of a sparse home crowd, against a weak opposition, on a dead pitch. In fact, I would now hope for Sachin’s sake that he doesn’t get it in this Test. It would be so much better if he were to score his hundredth hundred on the forthcoming Australia tour where the conditions will be more challenging and it will count for something.

His first hundred is still memorable because it was made against the odds in a match-saving effort on the fifth day of a Test match in England.   

Looking at him in the field 22 years later, trim and active under his floppy hat, I couldn’t help feeling he deserved better than to be given a gift of a flat track on which a weak West Indian lineup notched up 267 for the loss of only two wickets in 91 overs.

I asked India’s pace debutant Varun Aaron, who had a heart-breaking wicketless opening day, why he was pitching the ball so short and he said the ball was coming on to the bat so easily with no sideways movement that he felt he had no option. Cricket is a team game and pitches should be prepared with the Aarons of the world in mind as much as the Tendulkars. Mumbai is known to produce sporting, result-oriented wickets. Who knows, with such a brittle side as the current Windies, India may still pull off a win. But the first day’s evidence did no credit to the game of cricket, or even to the master himself.