This piece is not for those who consider Sachin Tendulkar to be a holy
cow, who think it is blasphemous to examine his game and impact more
closely. There are too many of these people in India particularly, and
it is a sign of how blinkered our media is that we get hardly any
arguments in this regard. Instead, we just get mindless comparisons
with Brian Lara for the crown of the best batsman in the world.
The truth however is that Tendulkar has not even been India's best
batsman in the last five years, let alone the world's. His ability to
deliver decisively under pressure has been highly suspect. He rarely
wins his team any matches on his steam, and most importantly, sometimes
has appeared to put his individual gains over the team's. At the very
least, it deserves a debate.
First of all, and let’s get this
out of the way straight away, there is no question that Sachin
Tendulkar is one of the most gifted batsman of all time. His natural
talent is beyond dispute; the combination of remarkably sound technique
and aesthetically pleasing flair is very unique. The ability to make
economical movements that effect more than what the eyes see
immediately, decisively attack balls that others defend and
consistently pierce gaps easily set him apart on the talent stakes from
pretty much every contemporary batsman (except Brian Lara). And of
course, India is very fortunate to have such talent serve its national team.
But cricket ultimately is a team
game. If you make individuals stars in a team game, it stands to reason
that their contribution to the team’s success is in that proportion
too. It is true in every other sport, but somehow this basic truth
gets obfuscated in cricket. And on this count, to put it bluntly,
Sachin Tendulkar does not live up to anything near his billing. Unlike
every single notable peer of his – Lara, Steve Waugh, Aravinda De
Silva, Inzamam, Ponting, Hayden, Kallis, Fleming and most importantly
Rahul Dravid.
In the
1990s, everyone used to say that Tendulkar’s was the all-important
wicket in the Indian team. It certainly bore examination, as there were
numerous occasions when his dismissal ended the resistance from the
Indian team. Most notably in the Chennai test against Pakistan, when
Tendulkar’s superb 136 in the fourth innings could not win India the
match, as he lost his wicket about twenty runs before the target (his
lower back injury was acting up), and the remaining four wickets
promptly collapsed. The assumption always was that Tendulkar is under
so much pressure because he knows if he gets out, the team will fold up
instantly, and to be fair, it was more than partially true.
But this was before the new era
in Indian cricket dawned, before Sourav Ganguly became captain in 2000.
With the emergence of Dravid, Laxman, Ganguly and later Sehwag as
genuine match-winners, the pressure has been off Tendulkar for quite a
while. And yet, since then, Tendulkar has deteriorated as a player. He
does not deliver in crunch situations and you’d be hard pressed to find
a single occasion when he took India home.
In the presence of a few facts (as on November 18th, 2006), it is actually quite appalling that Tendulkar is rated among the best batsman in the world, let alone the best.
Fact One: Since the great Kolkata test match against Australia in 2001, where Laxman, Dravid and Harbhajan crafted India’s greatest ever test win and a genuine rebirth, India has won 25 test matches in India
and abroad. The Man of the Match distributions are telling – Laxman 2,
Kumble 4, Sehwag 2, Harbhajan 5, Dravid 5, Pathan 3, Ganguly, Kathik
and Das 1 each . Sachin Tendulkar? Zero.
Yes,
Tendulkar contributed to his team’s cause often enough, but no, he did
not play a single innings that changed the course of a match or a
series during this period. Not even one.
It’s not like he saved India any matches either; there too it is Dravid who is the colossus for India.
How different this is from Lara, Ponting, Hayden, Dravid or Inzamam – any casual follower of cricket will also know.
Fact Two:
Many keep saying that he’s the greatest one-day batsman ever. The
figures sure suggest that. Matches: 368. Average: 44. Centuries: 40.
Wow.
Now, chew on these figures. Tendulkar’s ODI averages in Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand
(usually tougher places to bat in than the subcontinent) are 28, 29, 27
and 27 respectively (these figures are against the host team only). His
tally of centuries in these countries is 0, 1, 1 and 0. Meanwhile, his
ODI averages against Bangladesh, Kenya and Zimbabwe are 50, 108 and 49.
Compare this to Brian Lara’s ODI record. Matches: 279. Average: 41.37. 100s: 19. Huh, you say?
His ODI averages in Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand are 37, 32, 36 and 52. His ODI average against Sri Lanka
is 67, and it would do well to remember that those are not home
conditions for him, as they are for Tendulkar. There’s a reason why
Murali has publicly stated that Lara is the best batsman in the world,
and not Tendulkar.
Also, Lara’s averages do not get
ridiculously skewed against the weaker teams (as is curiously the case
with all the other great batsmen, except Tendulkar). He averages 42, 43
and 45 against Bangladesh, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
It has been murmured in many
quarters over the years, that Tendulkar is a bit of flat track bully,
who relishes weaker attacks and does not play consistently against
stronger bowling attacks. This is actually borne out in test cricket
too.
Tendulkar peaked in 1998, when he made those magnificent twin ODI centuries against Australia
in Sharjah. It has been steadily downhill since then, with a few
sparklers off and on, but that has apparently been enough for our
media. Sample, how in the 1999 World Cup, when he came back after his
father’s funeral and slammed Kenya (whose bowling attack could not have
been better than MIG Cricket Club’s at that time) for a 140, the media
raved about him. That he did not cross 50 after that even once was
characteristically glossed over. (It’s not that failure is to be held
against him more fiercely than others – it’s just that his success
could be examined more closely).
No question, he was a significant contributor in India’s
path to the final in the 2003 World Cup. But though, his scintillating
innings against Pakistan is the one most remember, the life he got at
mid-off when he was in his twenties in that same innings is forgotten
(that’s how fine the line between success and failure can be). Now, it
is also forgotten that he gave away his wicket with an ugly, mindless
stroke in the final, in the very first over. Just because the team was
chasing 350, he felt no need to build an innings and demonstrate a
thought-out effort? But that was actually as per the law of averages.
It was Tendulkar’s 9th consecutive failure in a big final (and that
record’s gotten worse three years later, by the way). His 10 off 26
balls against Australia in the Champions Trophy crunch game just carries on the trend.
Fact Three:
It is not a coincidence that not a single Tendulkar innings featured in
the Wisden list of the “100 Greatest Test Innings” of all time. Not
even from before 2001. This is not to say that he did not produce some
great test innings, but none of them met the most important criterion
in that Wisden exercise – winning your team the match, or saving it –
that’s what pressure is about at the end of the day. The only classic
fourth innings knock Tendulkar has played in his entire career is the
136 against Pakistan in Chennai, but he did not take it all the way, and India
lost by a handful of runs. (Within a month of that losing effort, Lara
produced a stunning 150 not out that helped his team beat Australia by 1 wicket, and that innings was in the top ten of that same Wisden list).
In his early days, Tendulkar did produce some outstanding test innings –Manchester (1990 – this is, till date, his only 4th innings knock to save a test) and Perth
(1991) are good examples. Moreover, his batting average of 36 in the
fourth innings is not an indicator of “the world’s greatest batsman”.
Fact Four:
Forget being the world’s best batsman, Tendulkar is not even India’s greatest batsman today. That distinction goes to Rahul Dravid, by a mile.
No-one has won India
more matches with the bat than Dravid has, not to speak of the matches
he has saved. Both Laxman and Sehwag have played more significant,
match-winning innings for the Indian team in the last 5 years than
Tendulkar has (the man-of-the match awards clearly tell you that). So,
why is he considered our greatest batsman?
Fact Five:
Tendulkar and Dravid make an interesting comparison study in another aspect.
Think of all the adjustments
(some would say sacrifices) Dravid made throughout his career, both in
ODIs and Tests, and the story gets even more interesting. Dravid agreed
to keep wickets in one-dayers to give his side a better balance. He
went down to number 6 in tests, and even opened several times, to lend
his side flexibility.
Tendulkar? He never even considered opening in tests for India, despite being India’s
regular one-day opener, and despite there being a severe need for his
kind of solid technique at the top of the order in Tests. He never even
gave it a shot even once. In fact, just this fact makes one wonder why
Sunil Gavaskar is not rated higher than Tendulkar – Gavaskar opened the
batting against far more ferocious bowling attacks than Tendulkar has
succeeded against at no. 4. Gavaskar saved, and even won, more test
matches for India
than Tendulkar ever did. And this, despite the fact that the Indian
team was not such a big all-round force in most of Gavaskar’s career.
In fact, with the pressure of being the all-important player off
Tendulkar (post-2000), it gave him the space to take his game to a
different level, but he could not do that.
Most importantly, the famous declaration of Dravid’s at Multan,
with Tendulkar at 194 not out, actually told an interesting story that
no-one in the media chose to highlight (just like Ganguly’s rift with
Indian team after Nagpur 2004 was never discussed publicly).
Just the test match before that, at Sydney,
Tendulkar made his very scratchy and uncharacteristic but unbeaten 241
(unarguably his worst big innings) that broke the record of the highest
individual score by an Indian abroad (made by Dravid just two tests
before that). During the last quarter of the innings, he inexplicably
slowed down even though India needed quick runs to declare (and that time lost would probably cost India
a win at the end). Ganguly sent messages through men with gloves and
drinks, but Tendulkar did not speed up. At one point, the TV cameras
clearly caught Ganguly raving and ranting in his dressing room, but it
didn’t go beyond that.
This was not new in Tendulkar’s career. Something similar happened when Kapil Dev was coach and Tendulkar captain (Ahmedabad, 1999).
Actually, the most famous instance of this is the world-record
partnership between Tendulkar and Kambli in school cricket, when they
turned their back several times on their coach Ramakant Achrekar, who
kept yelling at them to declare (they got a firing from him at the end
of the innings, but this part of the story is usually not recounted in
the media).
So, when
Tendulkar decided to ignore all Dravid’s reminders (which supplemented
the usual offers of drinks and gloves) to get on with the score, and
continued his pursuit of a double century in successive tests at his
own pace, Dravid took the bull by the horns and declared. The really
shocking part of this episode occurred at the press conference at the
end of the day, when Tendulkar whined publicly about how he should have
been allowed to get to his landmark. It is to Dravid’s credit that he
did not allow the situation to snowball, by having a private chat with
Tendulkar, which shut him up.
It wasn’t surprising that a large number of former cricketers took
Tendulkar’s side in this, given the individual dimension Indian (and
subcontinental) cricket has always had. Nor was it unexpected that the
Indian media by and large expressed outrage on Tendulkar’s behalf –
sensationalism over common sense has been the Indian media’s preference
for quite some time now. It was Ganguly’s pronouncement from Kolkata
that he would not have declared which was in extreme bad taste. This
kind of political gameplaying would finally backfire on Ganguly, but
that’s another story. The bald fact is that Ganguly, despite his record
and credentials as captain, never had the foresight or the gumption to
do what Dravid did in a match he captained by default (because of
Ganguly’s injury). But that’s another story too.
The
whole point of presenting all these facts is to question why Sachin
Tendulkar is the cricketing role model of this country. With the
natural talent he has been blessed with, he should be at the forefront
of India’s cricket success in the past few years. After all, don't they say that good players adjust and great players dominate?
His
failure on that count can only be attributed to weakness of mind or
character, and/ or allowing a certain individual focus to supersede the
team’s requirements.
Having said all this, once
again, it is worth adding that his importance to the Indian team is
still tangible. Talent like his comes rarely, and if he could only be
persuaded to play as freely as he used to in his younger days (and as
he did on just a handful of occasions in the last 5 years), with the
team’s objectives as the primary focus, he could actually justify at
least some of the hype he generates.
Till then, one has to wonder - why do the media keep projecting him as India’s
cricketing God? Why do former cricketers flinch from criticizing him?
Why is his inadequacy glossed over by commentators of the game?
Is it a sign of the shallowness
of our times, or of the priority of entertainment over substance in all
walks of life? Sadly, that’s not another story.
POSTSCRIPT
The above piece was written in November 2006, and to our own
surprise has been relevant even now (March 2008) as evidenced by the comments
(mostly abusive) that we still receive. However, Tendulkar's magnificent
batting in the CB series finals did inspire us to write this. Hopefully,
there will be many such updates like this; nothing can be better for Indian
cricket. But, please do not mistake them for disclaimers.
