Sachin Tendulkar: The new Don...

What an arc he has traced through all our lives. Down here in Australia we were blessed to experience him in all his incarnations. The boy genius. The ascetic. The master. And the icon. It has been special for him too for it was here he met The Don.

The Australian legend called his wife in 1996 to ask her to confirm the nagging feeling he had when he watched Sachin batting on television. He had never seen himself bat but he felt for the first time he was seeing something very similar. Lady Bradman confirmed the opinion.

It was two years later Sachin and Shane Warne were summoned to the Don’s house. When he left Bradman, who took every opportunity to watch the great bat, said “with a little luck he’ll have another decade at the top”.

More than a decade later we are still counting our luck. Maybe it was in that meeting that Sachin resolved to come as close as any one can to the other-worldly achievements of Bradman.

On the dressing room wall at the SCG there is a note from Bradman that says “If it is difficult I will do it now, if it is difficult I will get to it presently”.

It is a philosophy Sachin appears to have adopted. Lately it has become apparent that he has dealt with the difficult and now he is attending to the impossible. When Sachin first came he was a child-like prodigy, the young sweet face was no longer framed in a halo of curls, but his youth was as obvious as his talent. He scored his first century at the SCG in January, 1992 and future Indian coach Greg Chappell said at the time “you are seeing this afternoon the emergence of one of the shining stars of the 90s for world cricket, this young man is a very talented player, he has played very classy shots against some of the best strike bowlers in the world”. Richie Benaud noted one commanding cover drive for four off Craig McDermott was a “one from the coaching manual”.

It is worth name checking some of the Australians who played that match to give you a sense of how far back we are talking. Geoff Marsh and Mark Taylor opened, David Boon was at first drop.

Allan Border captained, Merv Hughes and McDermott led the bowling attack and a blonde kid called Shane Warne was playing his first Test.

Nobody who played that day remains on the field, but Sachin continues to bat. Indeed time has moved on to the point that Geoff Marsh’s son Shaun is now playing against your master.

The unbeaten 148 at the SCG was something, but in truth the Sydney deck is not that different to Indian tracks. It was two Tests later when the young man made a century at the WACA that he confirmed to everybody in the cricket world that he was something extraordinary.

Perth is as far from his home conditions as any Indian could encounter. Nobody truly liked batting there, some said that the last thing you should ever do when taking block on the WACA was look back because if you did you would see the wicket keeper in the distance and your heart would sink as you realised what forced the gloveman to move to another postcode.

It was a seriously fast and bouncy deck in the day, but Tendulkar mastered it as he would every wicket in every country. You suspect that if they put a pitch on the moon he would come to grips with the conditions and find a way to reach three figures.

At one stage Merv Hughes, who was taking a fearful punishing, turned to Allan Border and said “this little prick’s going to get more runs than you AB”. It was a peculiarly Australian piece of appreciation. Border always rated the teenager’s Perth century highly because he knew how a batsman struggles away from what he knows. These days Tendulkar shows Australians how they should bat on their own wickets.

In 2007 — a good 15 years after that first century in Perth — he faced Brett Lee and Shaun Tait at the WACA and introduced that extraordinary upper cut over the slips for four. It is not one of Benaud’s “from the coaching manual” shots but it was something to behold.

One against Lee is burned into everybody’s mind. Had Sachin stayed still he might have been struck in the head, but he bent backward like a limbo dancer, patted the underside of the ball with that jumbo bat and away it went.

Sachin’s skills are often celebrated and rightly so, but it was another part of his game that was on display at the SCG in 2004 however.

The ancient greek statue of Aphrodite of Milos, more commonly known as the Venus de Milo, is notably lacking its arms but none the less a highly valued masterpiece of the form.

Sachin’s double century at the SCG was missing something, that is, there was not one shot through the covers. The attempt to play into that area had caused him to fall down and this was his way
of correcting it.

Indian ascetics know that self denial will have its eventual rewards, western Christians are told by their bible that if a limb should cause them to sin they should cut if off.

Sachin simply left the cover drive in the dressing room and didn’t reintroduce it until he knew he had it mastered again.

The undefeated 240 was not his prettiest or his best, but in many ways it remains his most striking for its discipline and its demonstration of an all-consuming will to succeed.

There is a saying that in life you must tread quietly and carry a very big stick. It may to some degree sum up the approach of Sachin Tendulkar at the crease, although this is one career and one man who should never be reduced to a sum total.

— The author is a cricket writer for The Australian