Superstar status and the Sachin syndrome

THERE WERE 10,105 reasons why Sourav (out third ball for a duck) could have let Sachin zero in on 100 one-day wickets at Indore itself - for the Pepsi Cup to be full to the brim in the life and times of `Little Basher' Tendulkar during that `core' Third International. But that is not how the Ganguly ball rolled. Sourav delivered, Steve (23) hit high for the ball to land in Sachin's capacious hands - as the 2-1 cherry on the icing. At the prize function, Sachin did moot - only to laugh it off - the notion that he could have clinched those two wickets (to make it a round 100) during that Indore ODI - now frozen, in the mind's eye, as a precious milestone in Tendukar's career. Sourav at Indore, following that Channel 9 duck, would have looked that much less diminished, in the public eye, if he had seen it fit to give thoroughbred Sachin his 100th wicket-taking head. Tendulkar (139), by then, had `Bradmangled' Australia all over again! And you need, as a cricket-watcher, to have spent some time inside the Indian dressing-room to get a true feel of how fellow players (of renown) react to the spotlight's turning, afresh, on the superstar in the team.

``Oh, but the atmosphere inside the Indian dressing-room has changed since the days you were there, especially after John Wright came into the coaching picture!'' I can hear viewers reacting. ``The dressing- room atmosphere has changed and hasn't changed,'' I say. The team does now matter more, on TV, to the extent that India has to be viewed to win. After that, personality clashes (whether you care to admit it or not) are still there, if only because that is the way of the show world. And the cricket world, I submit, is as near to being the show world, today, as makes no `high-visibility' difference.

But yes, the way the Indian team bonded, centrepitch, at the end of the runaway 118-run Indore ODI win certainly suggested `team spirit' of an order that would have made Vijay Merchant's Wadekar-blessed soul, up there, feel fulfilled. If Sachin was first at Indore, he was that only among 11 equals. There was V.V.S. Laxman to match Sachin here, shot for shot, with 83. Yet, in the way Laxman `ran out' of ideas when on the threshold of big things with 83 (after 45 and 51), we had an insight into how Sachin - having an `individual' point to prove during that Indore ODI - was extra-motivated in attaining the team objective alongside his own personal landmark. Laxman, with that 83 `best performance in a parallel role', looked at a loss to know why Sachin (even before the `VVS' run out came about) was going so fiercely for that second run. Laxman's Azhar- laidback Hyderabad attitude was that the leap from 83 to 100 was but a matter of four fours - interspersed with a single to keep the Sachin strike rotating! After all, Sachin had already crossed his personal 100 by then, so Laxman just could not comprehend what more the little champion was so furiously running after! It still is something outside Laxman's ken that the true achiever is one who mentally keeps running even after reaching the pavilion.

Here we come to the gut of the matter. Sourav, as a striker of the cricket ball, had been consistently failing India, so that the two Indore-preceding ODIs had seen Sachin (35 and 32) going hell for white leather in an effort to sustain the team's run rate. But the Indore ODI Sachin approached in a metamorphosed frame of mind. Sachin here strode out to the wicket determined to bat through the 50 overs - though he was to identify it as ``the first 40 overs'' in the light of the way that wizard knock of 139 finally unfolded. I envision that 10,000-in-one knock as a concept that took Kangaroot in Sachin's mind in the instant in which he heard that Steve Waugh had asked Sourav's India to bat first.

The team's cause now, Sachin instinctively saw, would be best served by his batting through the 50 overs - at a pace of his own making. There was no conflict at Indore, for once, between the team's (299) `total' interest and Sachin's aiming for his `personal' 10,000 runs' goal. Indore was the kind of pitch on which Sachin alone had the mental toughness and physical stamina to go for the big hundred. There was by that point - and I am here speaking of the `being-only-human' factor - the little matter of Venkatsai Laxman's having come on by 59-and-281 Eden leaps and 65-and-66 Chepauk bounds.

Sachin, after being dismissed for 10 and 10 in the Eden Gardens Test, discerned that the 126 he had crafted in the final Test (to set the Chennai victory tone) was a feat that had got submerged in the fateful final hour in which Tendulkar was dismissed for 17 (caught by Mark Waugh off Jason Gillespie) during that Cheapuk D- Day-to-be for Australia. The camera therefore, almost inescapably, remained trained upon Laxman - to the end at Chepauk - as this emerging superstar went in great style for that Chennai victory target of 155 with 66 of the finest. It thus was Laxman almost all the way, in public perception, from Eden to Chepauk. There was even a suggestion that the aura surrounding Laxman (as he came good in the first two ODIs, too, with 45 and 51) was something that overshadowed the lustre of Sachin.

Here is where India's top `personality performer' came dramatically into his own. Sachin knew, by the Indore stage, that he had to do something extraordinary to reassert his pre-eminent position in the Indian team. Laxman now was a rival. A healthy rival. But a rival none the less. Stardom already was in Laxman's grasp. Superstardom thus was the only niche left open for Sachin to grab. Somewhat like Shah Rukh Khan's having to underline that he remained the peerless megastar in the face of the neo- charisma surrounding Hrithik Roshan. Thus Sachin at Indore - like Sunil (10,122) Gavaskar on similar occasions - raised his game by several notches to underscore that he still held, in his resourceful hands, India's batting reins. This Sachin demonstration had, ideally now, to be in the stroke- laden company of Laxman. It was that at Indore.

This is `Star Wars'- as I have experienced it, first hand, through a lifetime's journey in the movie and cricket world. There is, therefore, no call to team up and adopt the sanctimonious posture that no competition exists between Sachin and Laxman. Competition it earlier was between Sachin and Sourav. Competition it now is between Sachin and Laxman. That is the ground reality. The rest is hugging the piece of chimera by which we vintagers reason that the team comes first, legendary performers after. The team is all-important, of course - if India loses, who wins? But, within the ambit of the team's reigning supreme, the pursuit of personal glory is a phenomenon that abides.

It abided in the era during which Bill O'Reilly and Jack Fingleton resented the manner in which Don Bradman just took the focus away from all others in the Aussie team. It must endure given a setting in which Sachin continues to perform in a vein impelling the media to return its grudging gaze to his renewed exploits in the middle. Mrinal Sen always did concede that Satyajit Ray was the master. But, in private, Mrinal (`Khandhar') Sen rated himself to be nothing less - as a cineaste. Likewise must Laxman, if he aims to get to the summit, begin mentally ranking himself as now being somewhere near Sachin - somewhere near the ideal to match. For that is the way you reach for the stars.

Sachin's batsmanship might be such as to proclaim the Oscar Wilde maxim: ``I have nothing to declare except my genius.'' Laxman (so long as he was there sharing the limelight with 83 while Sachin was building his Indore 139 saga) might have co-batted in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spirit of: ``Talent instantly recognises genius.'' Having so becomingly acknowledged Sachin's numero-uno status in world cricket, Laxman must begin, ruthlessly, assessing where now he falls short. Laxman, having conquered the genius of Shane Warne, must divine, after that 83, that to `run' with the hare (that is Sachin) is the only way to hunt with the hounds (that Rahul and Sourav are)! After a long time, we are viewing what Sunil Gavaskar always urgently wanted - the great guys being made to fight for their big spots on the small screen.

The way Laxman came along to all but supplant Sachin in viewer esteem, Sourav we would have expected, unfailingly, to uplift himself. Rahul, for one, certainly peaked to a new-found level of aggression when confronted by such a `live' tele-challenge to his standing in the Indian team. Viewers likewise looked forward to `Britannia' Sourav's ruling the waves - something that Ganguly had not managed to do up to the fourth ODI. In such a context was it frustrating (during that key Indore match) to view Sourav not being magnanimous enough to bowl Sachin, when that little man of parts already had (on top of 10,105 runs) 98 one-day wickets against his name. I suppose victory, like virtue, is its own reward - the Indore ODI is now behind us, as indeed is the Pepsi Cup. Hopefully, Sourav since Indore has struck back. India's Test and ODI wins vs Australia took Sourav far. Yet only so far. Sourav really goes further only if he sharpens the spectacle of India's winning with runs from his own left-handed blade. Something `Naghmanifest' from `Bombay to Goa'.

RAJU BHARATAN

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