The most important cricket match in a long time was threatening to go horribly wrong for India. Ashwin had just been replaced with Ashish Nehra.Experts were going ballistic, fans had started collecting stones, and Ashish Nehra was facing the scary prospect of becoming Piyush Chawla and Ashish Nehra rolled into one. But the man with the physics-defying motor action proved everyone wrong with two wickets, an economy rate of 3.3 and a fielding effort that had everyone rubbing their eyes in disbelief. How did he do it? A thorough investigation reveals the secrets.Below are the top 5 reasons for Nehra's performance..
1 Sreesanth’s tweet :
On the eve of the match, Sreesanth tweeted ‘You have to believe in yourself when no one else does’. Now, if one can get past Sreesanth’s exterior, one may discover the Aristotle within him. Nehra is one of the few who has managed to do that. Sreesanth’s tweets have always had a profound impact on Nehra and, suddenly, he forgot all the jokes on him doing the rounds and was re-invigorated with new-found confidence. It was just the kind of confidence he needed to perform in front of Prime Ministers, the Gandhi family, a billion people, and Viveik Oberoi.
2 Astrology and Mandira
Bjorn Borg had once said that he handled pressure by sleeping, preferably not alone. Imran Khan advises sleeping pills before an important match. Nehra needed neither company nor pills to sleep. On the night before, Nehra had just switched on the TV where he saw a Hindi news channel declare India’s victory. “Dhoni ki kundali kar degi kamaal. Pakistan ko le doobega shani,” they declared vociferously. On another channel he watched Mandira Bedi tell Javed Miandad that India was going to win the next day. Surely, the stars and Mandira Bedi both couldn’t be wrong, he reckoned. He slept peaceful in the knowledge that all will be good the next day.
3 Breakfast :
The next morning Nehra followed a breakfast routine that many believe to be a foolproof way to succeed. At breakfast, his eyes followed Sachin Tendulkar the way Shane Warne’s follows a pretty young thing. Sachin picked out a banana, so did Nehra. Sachin poured cold milk over his cornflakes, Nehra followed suit. Sachin crushed a walnut and bit into it. Nehra did the same, with scant regard for the most famous set of teeth in the cricketing world after Kamran Akmal’s. For Nehra, nothing would come between him and success in this match.
4 Dressing room debate::
As India lost wickets, Nehra knew his batting would be called upon to take India to a defendable total. But, there was one problem. Munaf wanted to go in before him. Given that this decision could have a major impact on the match, tempers flared. Eventually, when Zaheer got out, Nehra rushed out into the ground before Munaf could react. In the end, Munaf too got his chance to go into the middle. “Chalo sabki batting aayi,” Nehra said offering an olive branch. But the argument pumped up both the speedsters. And it showed.
5 Cheerleader No 1 :
“Do it for Poonam,” a spectator screamed at Nehra while he fielded at 3rd man. It was just the war cry he needed. Nehra remembered that the country wanted to win the cup, not just for Sachin but also for Poonam Pandey who’s promised to bare it all if India wins the cup. Nehra certainly didn’t want to be the one to deny the country such a momentous occasion in its history. And, the rest is history.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Atlas who would not shrug : Tendulkar
21st May 1997: A date that has annoyed, irritated or in some cases tormented many a cricket fan. It was on this day some Saeed Anwar broke Viv Richards' record for the highest ever score in a One Day International. The record was thus passed on from a legend of the game to a player who was merely good, but by no stretch extraordinary - Anwar averaged 37.62 against the major nations in ODIs, and away from home his average shrank to 26.70.
Then last year, another name joined Anwar at the top of the list: Charles Coventry. Even after he scored 194 not out, a lot of people in a lot of cricketing discussions over lots of beers in lots of pubs, would still be asking: Charles who ?
The anomaly at the top of the record charts was begging to be corrected. As my friend gaurav said, he was waiting for this day since that fateful May night almost 13 years ago.
He was not alone. There were thousands - millions probably - who felt that the name that belonged at the top of the table was that of Sachin Tendulkar.
In what is proving to be a golden twilight of his career, Tendulkar has systematically gone about checking all the un-checked boxes in his cricketing CV. One important one was ticked when he led a mammoth fourth innings chase against England at the same ground that he had failed to complete the job against Pakistan in 1999. Another was accomplished today, with the world's highest ODI score and first ODI double-century. No other name seemed to have belonged so naturally at the top of the list than his.
Until today, Tendulkar had seemed like the logical successor to Viv Richards as the greatest ODI batsman of his generation. Not anymore.
He is now undoubtedly, the greatest ODI batsman ever. He has made the great Viv seem like a mere prelude to the real thing.
From the moment he came out to bat and stroked his first boundary to the moment when he raised his arms in triumph, in release, in acknowledgment - he looked like he was batting in a different zone. This is supposed to be a man on his last cricketing legs, but he didn't use a runner for a single minute of his innings and came out to field from the first ball to boot! With Sachin Tendulkar though, what is supposed to be and what is, don't always match.
One man is not supposed to carry the hopes of a nation of a billion every time he walks out to bat. But he does.
One man is not supposed to be the barometer of a country's happiness - he is being thrust with an impossible responsibility. But he is.
A man who makes his debut as an impressionable, precocious 16 year old is not supposed to last for 20 years as an international celebrity and not have any outrageous scandals associated with him. One man isn't supposed to display a superhuman quality of being human, if he has been granted the superhuman gifts that Sachin Tendulkar has. But he remains so.
A man is supposed to be mortal, to be granted the allowance for errors. But he isn't.
A man is not supposed to retain the same enthusiasm for a sport across more than 20 years, having spent the majority of those years under public scrutiny like no other. But he has.
I thought I had expended all possible superlatives for Sachin Tendulkar, when he completed twenty years in international cricket but I forgot, for a moment, that with Sachin Tendulkar superlatives don't ever exhaust themselves. There might come a day when Roget's Thesaurus will fail to find adequate words to describe the man, but he himself will not fail.
As he raised his arms in triumph, a country pumped its collective fist and let out a collective primeval roar. The relief, the sense of accomplishment, and the satisfaction at getting to the landmark was all the more keenly felt because for a long time now, there has been only one man who seemed capable of breaching the 200-run mark in an ODI. Sehwag has also threatened to do that, but Sehwag has never come as close as Sachin has. He made 186 not out against New Zealand at Hyderabad, but that was in an era when 300 was an almost certainly winning score. He then hit 163 not out against New Zealand a year ago, but retired with cramps. And then of course there was that heart breaking 175 against the Aussies in November last year.
Many of us feared that his best shot at the record was gone with the end of that innings. When we, his fans, could not pick ourselves up after that shattering loss, how would he manage to do so?
However, while that loss might have broken lesser men, it seemed to spur Sachin Tendulkar on towards ensuring that such heart-break was never to be experienced again. The next time he came so close, there would be no denying him. And so he battled on. He had hit the ball with unbelievable power, and his hands must have been tiring. He had placed the ball with unbelievable dexterity, and his inventiveness must have been ebbing. He had run every single run with unwavering commitment as hard as he could - his partners' and his own - and his legs must have been sending urgent messages to his brain to let up. But nothing was going to sway him today. There had been too many golden moments snatched from him at the last moment. This one was going to be had.
The final flourish of a golden career is going considerably better than the purple patches of most other batsmen's careers. Two check-boxes remain to be ticked - a Test triple century beckons, but more than that, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar will want to keep his date with destiny on April 2nd 2011 in Mumbai.
Even if those landmarks are not achieved though, India will remain happy. He doesn't require much effort to keep India happy - all he has to do is get hold of a bat and stride out to the middle.
And so, years from now, when he has retired, we will be fondly paraphrasing Robert Browning to the next generation and the next: Sachin Tendulkar was in his batting gear and all was right with India.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Tendulkar become Sachin again...!!
Nov-5 2009
Coming November, Sachin Tendulkar would have played 20 years of international cricket. During those twenty years, although things have changed radically in Indian cricket, someone who looked at the scorecard for today's match, would have been forgiven for thinking that Indian cricket was stuck in a time-warp and that nothing had changed from Tendulkar's early years to now. It was a familiar tale of Tendulkar being the one-man army taking on the opposition under daunting circumstances. But what an army he proved to be! He very nearly pulled off a miracle for India, but destiny had only one landmark in store for him today. The man himself would have much preferred an Indian victory to 17,000 runs, but it was not to beIt is not every day that you can make 175 in an international game of cricket and feel so thoroughly miserable,but its Sachin !!!Nobody does solos better than him, nor, perhaps, has anyone endured as much heartbreak during those solos. Tendulkar almost broke the record for the highest score in one-day internationals (19 short of Saeed Anwar's mark - and 11 short of his own personal best); he almost led India to what would have been the second highest winning score batting second in an ODI (they finished four runs shy of beating Australia's 350-4 and had needed only 19 off 18 balls when Tendulkar was out); he almost kept India's hopes of becoming the world No 1 alive (now that Australia have a 3-2 lead in the seven-match series they cannot be overtaken). It was India of the 90s all over again: Again the same Sachin careless and free , Fighting alone .. same india choking again !!!! Tendulkar almost chased 351 on his own but, with the target in sight, he got out and the rest choked, falling short by three runs with two balls still to go. Remember In Chennai January 1998-99, Tendulkar, having played an innings as incredible as this, left the last three wickets 18 to get; tonight he left them 19 off 17 and we did it again !!!
And to cap all that, it was reported today that some 12-year-old kid has beaten one of Tendulkar's earliest feats. One Sarfaraz Khan made 439 off 421 balls in a three-day match for Springfield Rizvi school in Mumbai against the Indian Education Society. When he reached 330, he passed Tendulkar's best as a schoolboy, which he set in 1988 as a 15-year-old.
Sarfaraz then went on to pass the 349 that Vinod Kambli had made in the same game as Tendulkar - they shared a stand of 664 - and by the time he was out Sarfaraz had the highest score ever made in the inter-school Harris Shield tournament.
Is this the new SACHIN in making ...!!!
The Master moment !! The man with billion expectations..
I have read somewhere that :
“For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.”
After Sachin Tendulkar’s first Test match in Karachi 20 years ago produced just 15 runs and five wicketless overs for 25, hardened cynics might have questioned the wisdom of thrusting a 16-year-old on to such a stage.
A week later, in Faisalabad, there was nowhere to hide. When Tendulkar arrived at the crease to join his Mumbai teammate, Sanjay Manjrekar, India were in disarray at 101 for 4. In a column many years later, Wasim Akram wrote: “It was a lush green wicket, possibly the greenest I’ve seen in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was batting on 20-odd when a ball from me hit him. I immediately asked him if he was alright and he looked me in the eye and nodded. I was a 21-year-old then, so I did not give the matter much thought, but in retrospect that score of 50-odd was the first hint the world got about Tendulkar’s special talent.”
For the world, it was a hint. For the boy himself, it was so much more. “My first innings was a disaster,” he said. “When I walked out at Faisalabad, I told myself that I would do my best to just stay at the wicket, even if I didn’t score runs.” He finished with 59, having stayed at the crease for a shade over 4 hours. And although it didn’t win the Test, or set the pulse racing, it meant a lot to someone thrown in at the deep end. “I said to myself, ‘You can handle this, it’s not a place where you don’t belong.’”
In one of its special issues, Time magazine had Tendulkar’s debut at No. 4 in its list of Top 10 Sporting Moments, behind Michael Jordan’s The Shot (against the Cleveland Cavaliers), Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose being banned from baseball and Arsenal winning the English league title in the last minute of the 1988-89 season. In the years to come, you can take it for granted that thousands will claim that they were at the National Stadium on 15 November when he walked out in an India cap for the first time. In retrospect, it was certainly an I-was-there moment, though few could have imagined that Tendulkar would still be punching the ball through the covers two decades later.
Perhaps we in India can’t really fathom the full extent of the adoration and expectation that he has had to deal with in that time. Matthew Hayden, another batting colossus of our age, gave voice to what many outsiders feel when he wrote: “His life seems to be a stillness in a frantic world and I admire his mental strength. When Tendulkar goes out to bat, it’s beyond chaos—it is a frantic appeal by a nation to one man.”
Some, like Muhammad Ali, protected themselves with a veneer of loudmouthed arrogance. Others, like George Best, lost themselves in a haze of boozy, womanizing nights. With Tendulkar, the humility, the feeling that he considered himself truly fortunate to be doing what he did, never went away, even if it cost him any semblance of a normal life. “I could say that I didn’t get to do all those things that a normal teenager would do,” he told once, “but then again, not many people get the opportunity to do what I do.”
That awareness of the big picture was best illustrated in Steve Waugh’s final Test at SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) in January 2004. Twenty minutes before stumps, with Australia seemingly safe, Waugh—who had scripted a typically defiant 80 just when his team most needed it—swept a delivery from Anil Kumble to deep square leg, where Tendulkar wrapped his hands around it. As 40,000 Australians rose in unison, it took Tendulkar a moment to comprehend the significance of the occasion.
“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that I had a hand in Steve Waugh’s last dismissal,” he said later. “I was thinking of how we could pull off the win. But once I realized that it was his last innings, I ran all the way from the boundary to congratulate him. I said, ‘You’ve made every Australian proud, and every cricketer admires you’. That was about it really, nothing more.”
Just as Sunil Gavaskar was defined by his heroics against the all-conquering West Indies, so Tendulkar remains peerless because of the enormity of his achievements against Australia. Numbers matter in sport, but nothing counts quite as much as how you do against the best. With 10 Test centuries and eight one-day hundreds against the dominant team of his era, Tendulkar’s place in the pantheon is beyond dispute.
More than cold statistics though, it’s the moments that will endure long after he’s put his bat away for the last time. That final over in the Hero Cup semi-final. The audacious assault on Shane Warne in Chennai. The cold-eyed targeting of Shoaib Akhtar at Centurion, South Africa, in 2003. That 175 in Haydrabad !!! , That match-winning century in Chennai, just a fortnight after the streets in the vicinity of his restaurant in Mumbai had resembled war-torn Beirut.
And most of all, Perth in February 1992. That magical 114 on a lightning-fast pitch, even as the team was routed by 300 runs. Watching the teenager stand on tiptoe and cut and drive with the panache of an old pro in baggy green, Merv Hughes, he of the walrus moustache and the colourful sledges, turned to Allan Border and said, “This little ***** is going to get more runs than you, AB.” And He was right.
“For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.”
After Sachin Tendulkar’s first Test match in Karachi 20 years ago produced just 15 runs and five wicketless overs for 25, hardened cynics might have questioned the wisdom of thrusting a 16-year-old on to such a stage.
A week later, in Faisalabad, there was nowhere to hide. When Tendulkar arrived at the crease to join his Mumbai teammate, Sanjay Manjrekar, India were in disarray at 101 for 4. In a column many years later, Wasim Akram wrote: “It was a lush green wicket, possibly the greenest I’ve seen in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was batting on 20-odd when a ball from me hit him. I immediately asked him if he was alright and he looked me in the eye and nodded. I was a 21-year-old then, so I did not give the matter much thought, but in retrospect that score of 50-odd was the first hint the world got about Tendulkar’s special talent.”
For the world, it was a hint. For the boy himself, it was so much more. “My first innings was a disaster,” he said. “When I walked out at Faisalabad, I told myself that I would do my best to just stay at the wicket, even if I didn’t score runs.” He finished with 59, having stayed at the crease for a shade over 4 hours. And although it didn’t win the Test, or set the pulse racing, it meant a lot to someone thrown in at the deep end. “I said to myself, ‘You can handle this, it’s not a place where you don’t belong.’”
In one of its special issues, Time magazine had Tendulkar’s debut at No. 4 in its list of Top 10 Sporting Moments, behind Michael Jordan’s The Shot (against the Cleveland Cavaliers), Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose being banned from baseball and Arsenal winning the English league title in the last minute of the 1988-89 season. In the years to come, you can take it for granted that thousands will claim that they were at the National Stadium on 15 November when he walked out in an India cap for the first time. In retrospect, it was certainly an I-was-there moment, though few could have imagined that Tendulkar would still be punching the ball through the covers two decades later.
Perhaps we in India can’t really fathom the full extent of the adoration and expectation that he has had to deal with in that time. Matthew Hayden, another batting colossus of our age, gave voice to what many outsiders feel when he wrote: “His life seems to be a stillness in a frantic world and I admire his mental strength. When Tendulkar goes out to bat, it’s beyond chaos—it is a frantic appeal by a nation to one man.”
Some, like Muhammad Ali, protected themselves with a veneer of loudmouthed arrogance. Others, like George Best, lost themselves in a haze of boozy, womanizing nights. With Tendulkar, the humility, the feeling that he considered himself truly fortunate to be doing what he did, never went away, even if it cost him any semblance of a normal life. “I could say that I didn’t get to do all those things that a normal teenager would do,” he told once, “but then again, not many people get the opportunity to do what I do.”
That awareness of the big picture was best illustrated in Steve Waugh’s final Test at SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) in January 2004. Twenty minutes before stumps, with Australia seemingly safe, Waugh—who had scripted a typically defiant 80 just when his team most needed it—swept a delivery from Anil Kumble to deep square leg, where Tendulkar wrapped his hands around it. As 40,000 Australians rose in unison, it took Tendulkar a moment to comprehend the significance of the occasion.
“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that I had a hand in Steve Waugh’s last dismissal,” he said later. “I was thinking of how we could pull off the win. But once I realized that it was his last innings, I ran all the way from the boundary to congratulate him. I said, ‘You’ve made every Australian proud, and every cricketer admires you’. That was about it really, nothing more.”
Just as Sunil Gavaskar was defined by his heroics against the all-conquering West Indies, so Tendulkar remains peerless because of the enormity of his achievements against Australia. Numbers matter in sport, but nothing counts quite as much as how you do against the best. With 10 Test centuries and eight one-day hundreds against the dominant team of his era, Tendulkar’s place in the pantheon is beyond dispute.
More than cold statistics though, it’s the moments that will endure long after he’s put his bat away for the last time. That final over in the Hero Cup semi-final. The audacious assault on Shane Warne in Chennai. The cold-eyed targeting of Shoaib Akhtar at Centurion, South Africa, in 2003. That 175 in Haydrabad !!! , That match-winning century in Chennai, just a fortnight after the streets in the vicinity of his restaurant in Mumbai had resembled war-torn Beirut.
And most of all, Perth in February 1992. That magical 114 on a lightning-fast pitch, even as the team was routed by 300 runs. Watching the teenager stand on tiptoe and cut and drive with the panache of an old pro in baggy green, Merv Hughes, he of the walrus moustache and the colourful sledges, turned to Allan Border and said, “This little ***** is going to get more runs than you, AB.” And He was right.
Vettori of the Year !!!
In a shocking mix-up that's sure to have major implications on cricket, the ICC has totally misunderstood Ricky Ponting's views on dead-rubber ODIs and have introduced the world's first dead-rubber international world cup.
According to the new tournament rules, eight of the world's top cricketing nations will play each other in a league stage consisting entirely of meaningless dead-rubber matches. The four best teams will then play the two semi-finals and the final, which will also be dead rubbers. The tournament winner will then be decided by a draw of lots.
"This is the first in a long list of initiatives from the ICC to revitalise cricket, based on feedback from the game's many stakeholders, including players, boards, the media and fans," said an ICC spokesman, pulling a rabbit out of his hat for effect. Explaining some of the future plans the ICC has in store for the game, he said, "We all know that fans come to see fours and sixes, so in the future we'll be introducing a new format that will eliminate those pesky singles, twos and dot balls, and will consist solely of boundary hits."
He also hinted at the possibility of a future event that will consist purely of media coverage, with no actual cricket being played. "We'll see how those pampered punk players complain about too much cricket then, shall we?" he thought to himself, making a timely exit before anyone asked inconveniently pertinent questions.
The new tournament has generated mixed responses around the world.
"This idea is worse than the 51 which Sepp Blatter has every day," said an anguished Ponting, who is distraught at being wrongly credited for the innovation. "It's ridiculous. You say one thing and people hear something completely different. Now I know how Harbhajan Singh feels," he said, in an unexpected show of sympathy for Australia's best loved offspinner.
"Oh! Awesome! This is great news for South Africa!" said a delighted Graeme Smith. "We usually lose crucial matches, but since the dead-rubber World Cup will have no crucial matches whatsoever, we're sure to win this time," he pointed out, rather logically.
In another exciting development, India, which recently fired Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh as bowling and fielding coach respectively, has given Singh back his job, albeit in a different role. Singh and former India team-mate Ajay Jadeja will be the new "futile 50-partnership in a losing cause" coaches for the Indian team.
"When your team is down four wickets for 25, chasing a 300-plus total, you need batsmen who can buckle down and put on a dull, pointless 50-run partnership, raise false hope, and then trigger a collapse by needlessly getting run out or holing out to long-on. Robin and I were past masters at this crucial skill, and we're extremely excited to have an opportunity to pass on our knowledge to youngsters," said Jadeja, with Singh nodding his approval.
"It's a skill that has pretty much disappeared from the Indian side, though Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh showed some glimpses of promise in that game against Australia. Still, it was far too exciting to be a true classic in the Jadeja-Robin Singh tradition," said BCCI President Shashank Manohar. "By hiring the former greats as coaches, we hope to bring this aspect of the team back to where it once was," he added, causing a sharp rise in the blood-pressure levels of Indian cricket fans worldwide.
And finally, to save enormous amounts of time and money, New Zealand Cricket has decided to consolidate all their national cricketing awards for bowling, batting, fielding and coaching into a single award called the "Daniel Vettori of the Year".
According to the new tournament rules, eight of the world's top cricketing nations will play each other in a league stage consisting entirely of meaningless dead-rubber matches. The four best teams will then play the two semi-finals and the final, which will also be dead rubbers. The tournament winner will then be decided by a draw of lots.
"This is the first in a long list of initiatives from the ICC to revitalise cricket, based on feedback from the game's many stakeholders, including players, boards, the media and fans," said an ICC spokesman, pulling a rabbit out of his hat for effect. Explaining some of the future plans the ICC has in store for the game, he said, "We all know that fans come to see fours and sixes, so in the future we'll be introducing a new format that will eliminate those pesky singles, twos and dot balls, and will consist solely of boundary hits."
He also hinted at the possibility of a future event that will consist purely of media coverage, with no actual cricket being played. "We'll see how those pampered punk players complain about too much cricket then, shall we?" he thought to himself, making a timely exit before anyone asked inconveniently pertinent questions.
The new tournament has generated mixed responses around the world.
"This idea is worse than the 51 which Sepp Blatter has every day," said an anguished Ponting, who is distraught at being wrongly credited for the innovation. "It's ridiculous. You say one thing and people hear something completely different. Now I know how Harbhajan Singh feels," he said, in an unexpected show of sympathy for Australia's best loved offspinner.
"Oh! Awesome! This is great news for South Africa!" said a delighted Graeme Smith. "We usually lose crucial matches, but since the dead-rubber World Cup will have no crucial matches whatsoever, we're sure to win this time," he pointed out, rather logically.
In another exciting development, India, which recently fired Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh as bowling and fielding coach respectively, has given Singh back his job, albeit in a different role. Singh and former India team-mate Ajay Jadeja will be the new "futile 50-partnership in a losing cause" coaches for the Indian team.
"When your team is down four wickets for 25, chasing a 300-plus total, you need batsmen who can buckle down and put on a dull, pointless 50-run partnership, raise false hope, and then trigger a collapse by needlessly getting run out or holing out to long-on. Robin and I were past masters at this crucial skill, and we're extremely excited to have an opportunity to pass on our knowledge to youngsters," said Jadeja, with Singh nodding his approval.
"It's a skill that has pretty much disappeared from the Indian side, though Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh showed some glimpses of promise in that game against Australia. Still, it was far too exciting to be a true classic in the Jadeja-Robin Singh tradition," said BCCI President Shashank Manohar. "By hiring the former greats as coaches, we hope to bring this aspect of the team back to where it once was," he added, causing a sharp rise in the blood-pressure levels of Indian cricket fans worldwide.
And finally, to save enormous amounts of time and money, New Zealand Cricket has decided to consolidate all their national cricketing awards for bowling, batting, fielding and coaching into a single award called the "Daniel Vettori of the Year".
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sachin at his best
Centurion, 1 March 2003
Sachin Tendulkar has never batted better than in the World Cup of 2003, and during it never better than for three famous deliveries against Shoaib Akhtar in Centurion.
This was a match Tendulkar said he was compelled to live a year in advance. Everywhere he went, people reminded him about the 1st of March, the fixture against Pakistan. Consequently he did not sleep properly for 12 nights leading up.
Facing a handsome target, Tendulkar shed his pent-up anxiety with three strokes in Shoaib's opening over to jumpstart a classic innings. The first of them - reaching out (were he not so pumped up, he would have surely let it pass for a wide), at once cutting and tipping, very high over the square third-man boundary - would become an icon, for cricketing merit; its sheer thrill, and nationalist symbolism, a sort of belated rebuff to the Miandad six.
The second stroke was his lovely trademark - back in the crease and with swirling wrists diverting a reasonable delivery to square leg. But the third shot - the third shot.
A little trot across to off stump, block, down the ground to the on, four. No back-lift, no follow-through: none needed. I have never seen such a concisely expressed cricket stroke. He simply met the ball and the entire execution began there and finished there. And by now the crowd, the most vividly alive of the tournament, had gone quite wild. Visually it was like a cinematic special effect: everything moved in a blur - flags, roars, horns, waves, the ball, Shoaib - and amid it Sachin and his pure stroke appeared magically frozen.
Sachin Tendulkar has never batted better than in the World Cup of 2003, and during it never better than for three famous deliveries against Shoaib Akhtar in Centurion.
This was a match Tendulkar said he was compelled to live a year in advance. Everywhere he went, people reminded him about the 1st of March, the fixture against Pakistan. Consequently he did not sleep properly for 12 nights leading up.
Facing a handsome target, Tendulkar shed his pent-up anxiety with three strokes in Shoaib's opening over to jumpstart a classic innings. The first of them - reaching out (were he not so pumped up, he would have surely let it pass for a wide), at once cutting and tipping, very high over the square third-man boundary - would become an icon, for cricketing merit; its sheer thrill, and nationalist symbolism, a sort of belated rebuff to the Miandad six.
The second stroke was his lovely trademark - back in the crease and with swirling wrists diverting a reasonable delivery to square leg. But the third shot - the third shot.
A little trot across to off stump, block, down the ground to the on, four. No back-lift, no follow-through: none needed. I have never seen such a concisely expressed cricket stroke. He simply met the ball and the entire execution began there and finished there. And by now the crowd, the most vividly alive of the tournament, had gone quite wild. Visually it was like a cinematic special effect: everything moved in a blur - flags, roars, horns, waves, the ball, Shoaib - and amid it Sachin and his pure stroke appeared magically frozen.
Tendulkar serves notice
Peshawar, 16 December 1989
The crowd was huge, and some of them even had tickets. Many took advantage of the general spirit of friendliness and sat anywhere they could. It is easy to see why the forefathers of the security men at Peshawar could not control the Khyber Pass. Amid the confusion, a legend was born there 20 years ago.
He was 16, had almost curly hair, curiosity in his eyes, and steel in his wrists. His treatment of Abdul Qadir is part of folklore now. Sachin Tendulkar played only because it was not an official one-day match, and Kapil Dev was nursing a stiff neck. At that stage there was no plan to play Tendulkar in the one-day tournament at all. But after that he couldn't be denied.
Eighteen deliveries changed everything. In that time he made 53 (unbeaten), hitting Mushtaq Ahmed for two huge sixes, and then Abdul Qadir for 27 runs in a single over, with three sixes in a row. There was no wild slogging. When Qadir dropped one short as Tendulkar stepped out, the batsman had the arrogance to go through with his shot anyway. The bat made a lovely arc, and for all we know the ball is still travelling - no one could find it.
At the other end was the captain, Kris Srikkanth, no slouch himself. Later that evening he said, referring to the one-day series, "The little bugger must play now." The little bugger has been playing ever since.
The crowd was huge, and some of them even had tickets. Many took advantage of the general spirit of friendliness and sat anywhere they could. It is easy to see why the forefathers of the security men at Peshawar could not control the Khyber Pass. Amid the confusion, a legend was born there 20 years ago.
He was 16, had almost curly hair, curiosity in his eyes, and steel in his wrists. His treatment of Abdul Qadir is part of folklore now. Sachin Tendulkar played only because it was not an official one-day match, and Kapil Dev was nursing a stiff neck. At that stage there was no plan to play Tendulkar in the one-day tournament at all. But after that he couldn't be denied.
Eighteen deliveries changed everything. In that time he made 53 (unbeaten), hitting Mushtaq Ahmed for two huge sixes, and then Abdul Qadir for 27 runs in a single over, with three sixes in a row. There was no wild slogging. When Qadir dropped one short as Tendulkar stepped out, the batsman had the arrogance to go through with his shot anyway. The bat made a lovely arc, and for all we know the ball is still travelling - no one could find it.
At the other end was the captain, Kris Srikkanth, no slouch himself. Later that evening he said, referring to the one-day series, "The little bugger must play now." The little bugger has been playing ever since.
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