Bradman wouldn’t be Don if he had played for 20 years

Don Bradman played till he was 40. By then he was not a fit man. He had lost the war years and was never quite the same batsman after 1938. It is reasonable to suppose that had he been subjected to the intensive workload and travel of today’s cricketers over the 20 years separating his first Test and his last (52 Tests only), he would not have averaged 99.94.

Just how many runs and centuries he might have amassed is anyone’s guess — in one-day cricket as well as first-class — not forgetting T20. I’m sure he would have “had a ball” but the average must surely have suffered. The very fact that we are analysing the supreme Don alongside Sachin Tendulkar speaks volumes I think.

I first saw Tendulkar bat in the Old Trafford Test in 1990 when as a 17-year-old he registered his first Test century. It was a breathtaking performance by one so young and small. He won the Man of the Match award and was given a large bottle of champagne.

We heard him shyly tell the presenter, in his boyish voice, that he didn’t drink! That hundred saved India and it ranks with a handful of brilliant performances by young cricketers such as Archie Jackson, who stroked 164 on Ashes debut in Adelaide in 1929.
If somebody had asked me in 1990 if this wonderful little batsman would still be around 20 years later, I would have been strongly inclined to say: “No chance”.

I last saw him “live” in the Sydney Test in January 2004 when he made a small matter of 241 not out and 60 not out. India made 705/7 and Tendulkar put on 353 with VVS (Laxman). And Australia wondered what was going on. It was like Bradman was back, only playing for the wrong side.

I’ve watched Tendulkar many times since on television. He seems a permanent part of my life. His maturity was evident at the age of 17. Has anybody thought to check his birth certificate?!

The standard features of Sachin, I’d say, are his dignity and a lack of flashiness. What separates him from the rest, apart from his exquisite skill, is that dignity. The exhibitionists should think hard about what type of player enhances this wonderful game best.

Had Tendulkar been an Englishman it’s hard to see how he could have broken into international cricket much before he was 20 or so. More young cricketers have been blooded by England’s selectors than is generally realised but Brian Close, at 18, remains the youngest ever and I think Sachin might have had to hang around another couple of years had he not been an Indian.

That first Test century of his remains, I think, the most vivid memory for me — allied with that Sydney double-century which provided a sort of completion of a wonderful pair of brackets — though I’m glad to see him marching on still further.

I like his cover drive. It is the mark of class, and it’s astonishing how one so diminutive can get over the ball and lash it through the covers. There is certainly a romanticism in his batting that amazes the purist in me. Today batsmanship is vigorous, aggressive and sometimes ugly and violent: but not from this little genius.

The writer is a formereditor of Wisden Cricket Monthly
—As told to Vijay Tagore