BENGALURU: Every Indian cricket fan claims a special kinship with Sachin Tendulkar. Mine is this: he played his first Test in November 1989, and I published my first book in that same month. For much of his professional career, this historian had his work diverted and his life enriched by the magic of Tendulkar at the crease. I watched him bat many times live, and many more times on the TV. I marvelled at the range of his strokeplay, at his commanding control of both the Test and the one-daygame, at his extraordinary ability to master different wickets, grounds and bowling attacks, and above all, at the cool authority and understated calm with which he bore, for a full quarter of a century, the absurdly inflated and sometimes maniacal expectations of millions of his countrymen.
I was living in Delhi when Sachin Tendulkar made his debut tour of Pakistan, and it was in my old college common room-sitting with students a decade and a half younger than me-that I saw snatches of the sixteen-year-old bat, resolutely keeping out Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram while stroking Abdul Qadir for handsome boundaries. I first saw Sachin in the flesh in a Wills Trophy match at the Feroz Shah Kotla in 1990, shortly after that tour of Pakistan. He did not bat in that match; but I remember, most vividly, his alarm and nervousness as hordes of fans rushed towards him as he went out to field, clutching at his sleeve, his cap, his foot, his arm, as is their wont.
Three years later, by which time he was an established Test star, I watched Tendulkar play for India against Zimbabwe at the Kotla. He was involved in a long stand with his childhood friend and schoolmate Vinod Kambli. Zimbabwe had one top-class spinner, John Traicos, who, although now over forty years of age, still had a fine high action, immaculate control, and subtle changes of flight. While Kambli came down the wicket and drove Traicos hard and high, Tendulkar stayed in the crease and deftly worked him past slip and behind square leg for twos and threes.
He looked set for a hundred, but then, when he was about 70, mistimed a drive off an unknown fellow named Ujesh Ranchod.He was caught at extra-cover by Traicos, diving full-length in front of him. This was Ranchod’s first (and last) Test wicket-he is probably bragging about it in Bulawayo still. Kambli went on to score a double-century.
The following February I timed a trip to Bangalore to catch a Test against Sri Lanka. India batted first, and after Navjot Sidhu and Kambli had plundered a rather ordinary attack, Sachin came out to bat just before tea. He started slowly, then accelerated.
Muralitharan was then new to Test cricket, and the master took apart the novice, treating him much as he had done the veteran Traicos, milking him through cuts and sweeps. When the second new ball was taken, Tendulkar creamed the seam bowler Pramodya Wickramasinghe for 18 runs in an over, mostly through the off-side. He had reached 80 not out by stumps. The next morning he proceeded carefully to 96, when he lost his off stump trying to cut the left-arm spinner Don Anurasiri.
(Extracted from The Commonwealth of Cricket by Ramachandra Guha, with permission from HarperCollins)