Time and again it has been said that Sachin Tendulkar plays for records. Time and again it has been said that Sachin Tendulkar chokes when India has to chase a target of more than 250. And time and again Sachin Tendulkar replies to all his critics in his own style, by letting his bat talk.
5th November 2009 was no different when India had to chase a target of 351 and many, including Ponting thought that it would not be possible. This match reminded us of many other matches. The very score of 350 reminded me of the 2003 World Cup finals when Australia scored 359. A terrific start by Sehwag reminded me of two matches: one against Pakistan in the same World Cup and the Natwest Series finals in July 2002 in which India successfully chased 325.
And when Sachin took command, his Sharjah centuries of 1998, the CB Series finals last year and most of his marvelous innings came to my mind again because he was simply at his ‘best’. He started slow no doubt which showed that he did not want to lose his wicket at any cost. Slow and steady, when he reached the score of seven, the nearly 40,000 people present were on their feet cheering his 17,000th run not knowing that was just the tip of the iceberg.
The part of his innings which amazed me the most was his strike rate which got better even though he was running out of partners. When the pressure was mounting, he got a better grasp of the match by hitting consecutive sixes off Hauritz which were from the meat of the bat. And his earlier six off Shane Watson was an identical twin of the six he smacked in the 2003 World Cup off Andrew Caddick.
His innings was tailor made to take his country to victory. Hitting the boundaries at the right time, converting the ones into twos and the twos into threes, rotating the strike, and of course, preserving his wicket almost till the end.
But time and again it has happened that Sachin scores a big chunk of the total and still India loses. Everybody remembers the 1999 Chennai Test against Pakistan in which after he scored 136 of the required 271, the last three batsmen could not score the remaining 17 runs. Why blame the last three for losing? Couldn’t the frontline batsmen stick around for a little more time? And again, this time against Australia, he scored half the runs while most of the others went back to the pavilion in a hurry as if they had been holding their pee since birth.
With that mammoth score of 175 while chasing, I believe he surely scored one of his best centuries. No doubt, he wanted India to win more than anything else whether it was 175 or a 200. I hope with that remarkable century, some barmy critics do not question his ability again. I hope they do not ask him to retire again as they did a few times in the last couple of years. A man at 36 who reminded us of two of (Sharjah) innings he played more than a decade ago is surely unfit to retire. By taking India to victories in the CB finals in Australia last year, by scoring a flurry of 90s in 2007 and now, by showing the world that he does his best to make his team win, critics should focus only on the other players who need to be more responsible and dependable in times like these.
Critics will surely say that he has scored 45 tons but why has India won only 32 of those matches. Please realise that apart from him there are ten more players in the team who do not always score when they are supposed to and a few others give away too many runs which makes his half-centuries and centuries a part of records and not victories.
