Sachin's Innings of 175 Vs. Australia at Hyderabad

It was a privilege to watch Sachin's Innings of 175 Vs. Australia at Hyderabad yesterday (5th Nov 2009). Though India did not win, Sachin reached a milestone of 17,000 runs and also scripted his 45th ODI century. Can you believe the next batsmen are Ricky Ponting and Sanath Jayasuriya way behind at 28 centuries each. A difference of 17 centuries - woh !

While Sachin was pacing his innings, I was reminded of his 143 versus the same team in Sharjah. Even that was for a losing cause. Was fearing the same end result and it finally ended up that way..

But believe me, this was a great innings from a guy who has played 20 years of cricket. But, as it is, he failed to see India through and that was visible from his body language when he came to collect his man of the match award !

Hoping to see personally in the stadium the master blaster in action on Wednesday, the 11th November 2009 at DY Patil stadium provided I get the tickets.

Tendulkar still teaching lessons

This is an article written by Rohit Brijnath in The Hindu - which echoes my views on the Master Blaster.

There is no weaseling out of this: I was wrong about Sachin Tendulkar. Earlier this year, his struggle painful to watch, I wondered: if he couldn’t mirror the exalted standard of his past, then why play? It was a miscalculation of the rage that courses through the uncommon athlete’s veins.

Even now, across continents, you can hear the hum of Tendulkar’s desire. For just playing. For runs. For winning. He knows that the great athlete has to prove himself, constantly, that we’re not interested in his yesterdays but only his todays.

I first met Tendulkar 20 years ago when he was 14 and have admired him since. Not because he scored runs with a ferocious beauty but because he possessed a powerful sense of duty and met acclaim with serenity. No sportsperson in 20 years has moved me like him except the elastic Michael Jordan, who was like a Michelangelo statue come to athletic life. But the batsman was ours, he was hope tugging at his box and our hearts. Jordan taught us that human flight was possible. Tendulkar is still teaching us.

Like some bonzai schoolmaster holding class, he taught us that don’t judge a kid by his voice. He taught us to sit down and back in our drawing rooms because he was going to hang around the crease for a while. He taught us that champions find the necessary calm amidst the delirium. He taught us that playing for India was fun but also a responsibility. And he taught us he could make grown men cry, sometimes watches, sometimes bowlers.

He taught us that only the exceptional performer can recalculate his skills and alter himself. Haile Gebreselassie, unable to maintain the speed of the 10,000 metres, has morphed into a marathon champion. Tendulkar rearranged his repertoire, and while he was not the greatest anymore, he taught us he could still find a way to be good. One last lesson

But this year, I began to believe he was declining, and quickly, because he was unconvincing for long periods, wearing an unsurety that looked so foreign on him. The vincible hero. At 34, how do you stop time, and deterioration? But 20 years after first learning from Tendulkar, there was one last lesson he had to teach. About concentration.

If first his getting beaten made me flinch, what made me keep watching was his refusal to flinch. The ball went by and he started again, like a student trying again to solve a problem. Every ball was a new ball to Tendulkar, a new life, a new start, it was like he had cleansed his memory of the previous delivery that hissed past his bat. It was like Jimmy Connors swearing the last point was unimportant, only the next one mattered.

What control of mind does it take to erase the immediate past, to not let doubt fester, to stay alert even as the bowler is exposing your hesitancy? The easy option would be to react, to swish harder. The hard choice was to just stay, to start afresh every ball with hope, to view temptation with priestly detachment. Tendulkar chose well. He taught us in this time that the first rule of sport is not to look good, it is to survive.

Tendulkar’s body may have healed and allowed him a fuller expression of strokes, but it is his confidence in himself, confidence that was shaken and rattled surely but never extinguished, that carried him on. He still gets beaten some days, but he is also more fluent, too, astonishing no less in his ability to rack up scores of 99, 93, 8, 17, 99, 8, 55, 71, 94, 30, 0, 16, 43, 79, 47, 72, 21, 4, 99, 29, 97 in his last 21 one-day innings.

What does Tendulkar play for? Team, himself, pride, records? Maybe he plays because part of him is just a boy who finds himself when bat meets ball. Maybe he plays because of a boy agog in the stands. Maybe he has summoned this last reservoir of energy to show a kid, now old enough to understand, why, for 18 years, the world has made such a fuss about his father.

Sachin - Why dont you open out on captaincy ?

Sachin was appointed deputy to Rahul Dravid for the test series in Bangladesh and England and he accepted it. When Rahul decided to quit the captaincy, Test Captain was not selected and Dhoni was made ODI and T20 captain. However, when it came to Test Captaincy, rumour mills informed that Sachin is tipped to be the captain and he is believed to have accepted it. It was widely reported that his captaincy is decided and only announcement is pending.

However, adding a twist to the tale, Sachin has informed CNN-IBN "I don't feel right about it at the moment" - why this backtracking. I strongly believe something is happening within the BCCI which is not coming out in open. Nobody has a clue why Rahul resigned (after a successful England tour) and now Sachin's story.

When will we come to know of the real reasons. If we were in the Western world, we would if these guys come out with their biography, but being Indians, I doubt that too !

Lord, letter better sense prevail to the selectors.

Rahul silences his critics !

This is a sequel to my earlier blog on Colonel dropping Rahul on poor form. As I wished, he has put the selectors to shame by scoring a fluent 214 in the second innings of the Ranji tie against Mumbai. Hope Colonel would take this into account and reinstate him in the team for the last 3 ODIs against Pakistan.

RAHUL THE WALL JAMMED

The “Wall” is cornered.. India faces Pakistan without the Wall, who led India to a test series victory in England during summer… Yes, he has been going through a bad patch – failed in the ODI series against Australia – but, where he was batting – not in his customary No. 3 position. If the selectors felt that his form is not good, he should have been allowed to play in the Challenger Series.. Dropping him for an important series like Pakistan doesn’t augur well for the team.

Is it the Rahul “Jammie” Dravid has been dropped only for his form – if that being the case, why not other players were not dropped earlier ! His average against England was 37.16 in 7 ODIs. He failed in the last 4 ODIs scoring only 1,24,4 and 0. When he scored 24 in Leeds, he played at No. 6 and was out in the last over. His 24 was off 17 balls ! He played as No. 5 and No. 4 in the last two ODIs in England. In the future cup, he scored 51 runs in 6 Innings before being dropped for the final ODI. So, if I take his last 10 innings, he has scored just 80 runs at an average of 8. His cumulative average is shade below 40 runs per innings.. Mind you, I’ve ignored his first three ODI scores of 46, 92* and 54 in England.

Let me go through the profile of my great friend, Sachin Tendulkar. I shall analyse, like I did for Rahul, last part of a series where his performance was bad and then another series where he failed miserably. In the series against Sri Lanka in 2005-06, Sachin scored 71 in the last 4 matches after scoring 93 and 67* in the first two. He did not play the 5th match of the series. In the ensuing series against South Africa, he scored 38 runs in 4 innings. So, he averaged a mere 13 in 8 innings. The series got over in November 2005. However, he was selected for the ensuing Pakistan Series (called as Balaji series) and he started off with a hundred at Peshawar. My question to ‘Colonel’ Vengsarkar is that when Sachin was not dropped by More & Co (or to use the word coined by More himself, rested) for the Pakistan Series if you are going by the form, why now Rahul ? If I go by majority in the Selection Committee, 3 members of More’s team continue. Only you and Raju are new. Or, do you want to say that there is a big difference between 8 and 13 ??? Or is it that the Board has changed its policies. You may note that I’m not arguing on the bad decisions he got in England.

Also, have you taken note of where Rahul bats – He is not in his customary No. 3 position.

Rahul being a gentleman himself has not spoken a word on his resignation of captaincy or on being dropped. Had it been someother xyz cricketer, your dirty linen would have been washed in the public, Mr. Colonel. There are reports that he fought to have Virender Sehwag in the team for the World Cup and today, the same Sehwag has taken his place. Am not again Sehwag, but against the policies of the Selection Committee. What is the BCCI / Committee doing on Sreesanth – he is a joker on the field and takes wickets once in a bluemoon ! In addition, runs off his bowling flows like the monsoon rains in Kerala, nonstop and too heavy (read too many) ..

Lot of ‘experts’ say that that your love for ‘Mumbai’ players or your wish to make Sachin captain has something to do with Rahul's resignation... He is a silent achiever like former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and a great diplomat – I’m not going to brood into these details. I take your decision in the right spirit and hope you would be having the same yardstick for all other players too ! I’m sure Rahul will put the Ranji Champions to shame and prove his mettle!

All the best, Colonel.