One last World Cup for Sachin Tendulkar

Only thing missing from Sachin Tendulkar’s cabinet is a World Cup and that is not the legacy India’s greatest batsman will want to leave behind. But are the stars in the right configuration? No one, not even Tendulkar, can win a tournament all by himself. Have India got the supporting cast he needs, asks DNA

Four years ago, it was worse. Fooled by an Abdur Razzak arm ball, Tendulkar inside-edged it to the wicketkeeper, having made just seven against Bangladesh. India lost.

Then against Sri Lanka, with India’s hopes hanging by a thread, Tendulkar inside-edged a Dilhara Fernando delivery onto his leg stump. A nation gasped — the sound is still probably travelling around the earth. Tendulkar zero, India out of the tournament.

As he approaches 38, even the incredible Tendulkar must know this is his last chance to finish on a World Cup winning side. Even if he is raring to go at 42, it is entirely possible there will be no World Cup to win, the 50-over game having been buried by 2015 (maybe not, thanks to television commitments!).

So here is the chance for the greatest one-day batsman in history to fill a significant gap in his bio-data. Ricky Ponting has three World Cup titles, Viv Richards two.

Tendulkar, in five attempts before this, has been unsuccessful. He might be in good company — Brian Lara, Richard Hadlee, Rahul Dravid, Ian Botham, Jacques Kallis haven’t won either, but that is no consolation.

Tendulkar will want to wipe from a nation’s collective consciousness the picture of defeat that summed up the 2007 campaign, and replace it with something positive, something inspiring.

Kapil Dev holding up the World Cup in 1983 is one of Indian sport’s iconic images. At the other end of the emotional pendulum is the most telling picture of the 2007 World Cup — India’s senior batsmen looking devastated.

There’s skipper Rahul Dravid, hand on face covering one eye, possibly wiping away a tear. Sachin Tendulkar sits to his left, hand over mouth, in intense shock. Behind them is Virender Sehwag, face cupped in hand. In each case the eyes tell the story.

A combination of disbelief, personal loss, shame, ruin, disillusionment, horror and self-pity. That is not the legacy India’s greatest batsman will want to leave behind.

But are the stars in the right configuration? No one, not even Tendulkar, can win a tournament all by himself. Have India got the supporting cast he needs?

In the needlessly long drawn-out first phase (in the two groups every team plays every other team once and four teams from each qualifies for the quarterfinals), players will have to tread the path between peaking too early and losing focus too soon.

India can afford to pace themselves, and Tendulkar himself can pick and choose his matches. But sometimes only a thin line separates the match-fit from the player out of touch.

The real World Cup begins with the quarterfinals on March 23 — and the challenge for the players will be to retain fitness and go into the final phase without any niggles or worse. The selectors have given India — and Tendulkar — about the best team they can, although it would have been comforting to have a second wicketkeeper.

But playing at home means greater pressure, and the Indian team will have to deal with that. Tendulkar has become used to carrying a billion and more people on his shoulders in the two decades he has played international cricket.

He has trained himself to switch off when needed, to ignore distractions, to place himself in a zone where neither sound nor vision, opinion nor comment affects him. He will need that zen-like state to deal with the pressures.

Last year he made one-day international’s first double century, but played only two matches. His abrupt return from South Africa with a hamstring injury after another two one-dayers hints at the mountain he will have to climb over the next couple of months and more.

There is too the question of 100 international centuries — he is now just three short — which will keep the country focussed on his every innings.

We ask too much of our champions. But so often has Tendulkar delivered that his one unfulfilled ambition sticks out. His deeds speak for themselves, he is in no need of redemption. But Sachin Tendulkar could make this World Cup his own.

Great players must win titles. Validation and inevitability thus come together.

The writer is an author and columnist who has written on Indian sports for over a quarter century