How Bradmanly is Sachin still?

THE URGE to ``fling away ambition'' (as Shakespeare put it), was Sachin Tendulkar consumed by it when, on 74, the setting could not have been more ideal for him to hit yet another Test double century against Zimbabwe? A supercatch it might have been (by Stuart Carlisle) that snared Sachin off Andy Blignaut's blond bowling.

Yet throw his wicket Sachin still did on that second day of the first Test vs Zimbabwe at Bulawayo. Vijay Merchant (whose first- class average of 71.64 abides as next only to that of Sir Donald Bradman - 95.14) had a deadly diagnosis to offer for the kind of extravagant shot (bat well away from pad) that Sachin here attempted. ``Time and again,'' wrote Vijay Merchant, ``I saw some of our batsmen make over 30. Why do our batsmen settle down only to get out soon after? If this is not lack of concentration, I would like to know what is? Is it that our batsmen are content to get their 30s, 40s and 50s? In cricket, a batsman has not only to be ambitious but even greedy for runs. If a batsman gets out to a really good ball, I have nothing to say. More often than not, however, our batsmen have made rash and careless strokes.''

Via ``rash and careless strokes'' were both Sachin (74) and Rahul (44) guilty of opening up, for Zimbabwe, the Bulawayo Test that Heath Streak and co. had all but lost when their team was bowled out for 173 on the very first day.

The end-result of that first Test (an Indian win by 8 wickets) is not the point here, for Sachin's final-act 36 not out came against a lot of Zimbabwe tosh. What intrigues all India is why Sachin has been tending, lately, to cast away the most prized wicket in the world. What, precisely, was the team position on that crucial Bulawayo second day; as against the second morning of the Harare Test today? Zimbabwe shot out for under 200 with well over four days to go for the Bulawayo Test to finish. Yet, after aptly being the Roundhead rather than the Cavalier in getting to 74, Sachin leaves his off-flank wide open for Zimbabwe to sneak back into the game.

So to the main question -now that Bradman is no more, is Sachin, unwittingly, becoming forgetful of how much more The Don expected from his bountiful blade? No way, my dear Sachin, would Sir Don have missed out on that godsend of a Bulawayo opportunity to hit a double hundred.

After all, wasn't it such a `Bradmanly' outlook that Sachin had displayed when returning (MRF bat in hand) with that 201 in the December 2000 Nagpur Test vs Zimbabwe? When I asked Sachin (at a press conference in February this year) about his getting somewhere near Bradman's double centuries in Tests, a flustered Tendulkar lost count of this second multiple ton (201 not out) he had hit for India! ``I have already scored a double century in Tests,'' Sachin came back, remembering only his 217 vs Stephen Fleming's New Zealand in the now notorious Ahmedabad Test of November 1999. Perish the thought that Sachin is no longer as ``greedy for runs'' as was Merchant! Yet, barring that masterful 126 in the March 2001 Chepauk Test vs Steve Waugh's Australia, it is disturbing to reckon the number of times Sachin, recently, has sold his Test wicket cheaply.

Like when he got out at 76 and 65 in the February-March 2001 India-Australia Test series-launcher at the Wankhede Stadium. And now for 74 vs Zimbabwe.

Sachin's finely honed mind, therefore, needs to be refreshed that there were no fewer than 37 occasions on which Don Bradman crossed the 200 rubicon in first-class cricket.

During 6 of those 37 multiple-ton happenings did The Don excel the 300 mark; 2 of the triple hundreds being in Tests! Indeed, 12 of Bradman's 37 plus-200 knocks were in Test cricket. So not only Sachin (whose Test highest is 217) but also V.V.S. Laxman (28 and 38 in the Bulawayo Test) needs to comprehend that only once, after getting to 281 in a Test match, did Bradman fail to touch 300.

This was when The Don found himself stranded on 299 not out, as Australias innings came to a close on Friday, January 29, 1932 vs South Africa in the Adelaide Test.

As for Sachin, following a full 11 years in international cricket, he needs to store, in his memory run-bank, the fact that, in a single series, the 1930 one in England, Don Bradman (in aggregate-crashing to a record 974 - ave. 139.14) hit 334 (309 of them in a single day under 6 hours) in the Headingley Test; 254 in the Lord's Test; plus 232 in The Oval Test.

A feat accomplished when Bradman was in the high meridian of his career no doubt. While Sachin became a big-game hunter for India so early in life (at the age of 16) that it is only now he must be rated, in the matter of being on a Bradman-hunt, as peaking. From the peak, however, there is only a descent.

And that is the only reason why I draw pinpointed attention to Sachin's failing to enlarge at least 4 of his recent plus-50s (for India) into Test 100s. The process of Sachin's not going on to 100 began in February 2000 against Hansie Cronje's South Africa (97 and 8 in the Bombay Test; 21 and 20 in the Bangalore Test).

But we then felt we had to give Sachin time and space to recover, after his having been asked to stay put, compulsively, as India's captain, following that traumatising 1999-2000 tour of Australia. It might sound churlish to say this of one who has just passed the 10,000-run milestone in ODI cricket, but it is his quest for quality as a Test player that makes Sachin a world celebrity in a class all his own.

Too much - it could be validly argued - need not be read into one rash stroke (when 74) by Sachin in the first stanza of the Bulawayo Test.

Yet something Sachin himself is quoted as saying makes you wonder if tiny Tendulkar has already begun to look with a certain contentment upon a career of rare achievement.

What, for example, do we make of this Sachin assertion: ``In the previous (March 1998) Australian Test series, I had scored 440 runs. This time I have scored 330-plus. So both series were good for me personally. In the last 6 Test matches against Australia, I have scored 3 hundreds; and 4 or 5 fifties. It's not a bad performance''

``Not a bad performance'' for anyone except one to the Bradmanner born! Sachin has his figures slightly mixed up though; he hit only 3 of his 27 Test fifties (not ``4 or 5'') at home vs Australia through 1998-2001.

Sachin scored 446 in the March 1998 Test series vs Mark Taylor's Australia, but only 304 during the recent 3-match rubber we so stunningly won 2-1 from Steve Waugh's team of titans.

If from a like 6 innings in 3 Tests vs Australia in 1998 as in 2001, descending from 446 to 304 Sachin views as ``not a bad performance'', we do have reason to feel perturbed. For, Sachin, your recent series total (from 6 knocks) of 304 was, remember, Don Bradman's score in a single innings of the Headingley Test (on Friday July 20, 1934)! And The Don would never have settled for a Test aggregate of 304 after totalling 446 in the previous series against a world power in the game.

Take, Sachin, Bradman's 1948 swansong tour of England, his Test series scores then read 138 and 0 at Trent Bridge; 38 and 89 at Lord's; 7 and 30 not out at Old Trafford; 33 and 173 not out at Headingley; and the famous Donald Duck in the last Test.

``Not a bad performance, a total of 302 runs from my first 6 Test innings vs England!'' - you could not conceivably hear Bradman saying, Sachin, even in the process of patting himself on the back for having clinched the Ashes, 4-0, for Australia.

In fact, that Bradman had 2 ducks in 9 Test innings, then, in a 5-Test series from which he could flaunt but 508 runs (ave 72.57) made it clear to The Don that it was time for him to put his bat away, unoiled.

Contrastingly, by no means is Sachin viewed as being anywhere near the end of his Test career. Yet this is clearly the hour to beware.

It is an hour in which the first 50 runs, in a Test, come easily enough. After that, it needs a little more effort now, even on the part of a batsman so remarkably gifted as Sachin, to convert that half-century into 100. Sachin (126) discovered this grim reality for himself during the watershed Chepauk Test of March 2001.

Before the current Harare rubber-decider got going, Sachin had already played 31 Tests more than Bradman (52); and, from 133 innings (as against The Don's 80), had 6830 runs to show against that awesome Aussie's Test career tally of 6996. Of course The Don's Test average of 99.94 is never going to be matched. So Sachin's current 57.39 Test average is rewarding enough to absorb in times when one-day cricket takes so much more out of even a world-beater like Tendulkar.

Yet we would never again like to view Sachin yield the palm, in a Test knock, the way he did when poised for his 100 at Bulawayo. It must have distressed telecaster Gavaskar no end to see Sachin so mindlessly fall when on 74. When I asked Sunil which nation's bowling he felt was the toughest for him to negotiate, Gavaskar surprised me by going off at a tangent to observe: ``Instead, ask me which country's bowling I'd like most to face; the answer is India, for play out the first six overs of Kapil Dev and a century is yours for the making!'' There was then no Zimbabwe rabbit for Sunil to pick.

But Sachin we expect to dominate (with big Test hundreds) at least against Zimbabwe. That Adelaide meeting of minds, means Sachin still has a Bradmandate with Destiny.

We are all hopeful, Sachin, that your Test finest is yet to come and just 10 more double centuries for India and you are on a par with The Don! Or at least 10 more centuries for India and you, Sachin, race past our own Sunil's world record of 34 Test hundreds!

RAJU BHARATAN

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