8 May 1999
The Super Natural
Simon Hughes
Revered by millions in India, a prince among batsmen past and
present, Sachin Tendulkar has arrived here to dismantle cricket's
best bowling attacks during the upcoming World Cup.
It is difficult to believe that a little man with cherubic features
and a shock of curly black hair holed up in an unremarkable hotel
beside junction 21 of the M1 has the power to influence a billion
people. But it's a fact. Over the next six weeks the exploits of 5ft
5in, 26-year-old Indian wonderbat Sachin Tendulkar will affect the
Bombay stock exchange, the BJP party's hopes of remaining in
government and the mood of his entire nation.
Before the Indian team flew to London last week numerous streets in
Bombay, Tendulkar's home town, were adorned with huge billboards
pleading "Save Us Sachin" and the newspapers carried daily front-page
updates on the back injury which had ruled him out of the Sharjah
Cup. Important election issues were relegated to inside pages.
Indian city centres will grind to a halt next Saturday, when he walks
out to bat against South Africa at Hove in India's first World Cup
match, as millions of his compatriots cram around fuzzy television
screen's and crackly radios, hoping and praying that the brilliant
skills of their willow prince will enable them to conquer the world.
It's not an unreasonable hope either. The World Cup is a batsman's
game and Tendulkar is a batting phenomenon who has accumulated
manifold awards and already has 40 Test and one-day international
centuries. He was the leading run-maker in the 1996 World Cup -
cricket's equivalent of the Golden Boot - despite India failing to
reach the final. He's on the way to becoming the most prolific Test
batsman of all time. And he only started shaving last year.
The sprawling tentacles of the Star Television network and India's
cricket-crazy culture have made this son of a language professor the
most recognisable face in Asia - he can't venture far from home
without disguise - and its most marketable. He appears in a quarter
of all Indian TV commercials, companies and individuals clamour to be
associated with him, 400,000 gold medallions of his head are about to
be released on the Indian market. His seven major sponsorship deals
make him comfortably the highest-earning cricketer in the world. His
annual income of $4 million at least quadruples that of his closest
rival, Brian Lara. Nobody else is even in the frame.
Their careers may be parallel, but there are marked contrasts between
Tendulkar and Lara. The West Indian has built an ostentatious,
nine-bedroomed home on a hill in his native Trinidad, with panoramic
views, a marble staircase and a swimming pool in the shape of a bat,
but he rarely stays there. He lives like he plays - extravagantly,
erratically, on a snakes and ladders board. He practises
lethargically.
Despite his riches, Tendulkar still lives in the low-rise block of
grey concrete apartments where he was brought up, in the Bandra
district, not far from Bombay airport. A sort of Indian Hounslow. He
calls it his "colony". He shares a modest two-bedroom flat with his
wife Anjali, a doctor, and young son. His parents live directly
above. Rickety bamboo scaffolding clings to a next-door balcony. The
only hint of a celebrated inhabitant is the silver Mercedes parked
round the side, which he enjoys taking for a late-night spin. Behind
the block is a dusty, tree-scattered paddock where, as a child, he
spent hours hitting a ball suspended in a sock.
"He still plays cricket with his friends down there and people don't
trouble him at all," Anjali says. "He's just a normal person in this
building."
Beyond its confines he is feted and fawned on and has been known to
don a hat and a false beard in an attempt to go to a movie. Film
stars and politicians slaver over his attention. At the president's
palace last year to receive a Padmashri - the Indian equivalent of
the OBE - Tendulkar was so beseiged by official guests that a
security cordon had to be formed to help him struggle to the rostrum
to collect his award.
He is inundated with presents of cars - most of which he passes on to
his brothers, who look after his finances - and offers of incentives,
though presumably not the kind once pledged to Denis Compton.
Arriving to play for Holkar in the 1944-45 Ranji Trophy final,
Compton was approached by a wealthy Bombay merchant and promised 50
rupees for every run he made after a hundred. Returning to the
dressing-room 249 not out, Compton was dismayed to find a note from
the man saying: "Sorry, Mr Compton, I'm called away on very urgent
business."
Playing in India it is possible to become used to the intense public
scrutiny, but it is very wearing. During a match at Eden Gardens,
Calcutta, even I, an anonymous county player, was constantly harassed
by autograph hunters pressing anything from sweet wrappers to dried
leaves into my hand to sign. What it must be like for Tendulkar, who
is followed by a gallery of 150 even while playing a social round of
golf, is unimaginable. When he was run out in Calcutta against
Pakistan in March, there was a riot and play was suspended until he
walked round the boundary to pacify the crowd. Coming to the World
Cup in England will be a blessed relief.
Certainly his is the most prized wicket in the tournament, for, in an
hour at the crease, he is liable to run amok. "He's belting people
out of the international scene," says Richie Benaud, who has seen him
play, and severely damage Shane Warne's figures, more than most.
After Tendulkar's back-to-back one-day hundreds against Australia
last year, Steve Waugh admitted he didn't know how to contain him.
Asked if Tendulkar was the new Don Bradman, Waugh said: "Look,
there's only one Bradman, that guy is unique and there'll never be
anyone as good as him. But I think when Tendulkar's career is
finished, he'll go down as the batsman who was second to Bradman."
Bradman's own views on this are intriguing. During a rare television
interview, the Don said: "I saw Tendulkar on TV and I was very struck
by his technique. I asked my wife to come and have a look at him
because I never saw myself play, but I feel that this fellow is
playing much the same way I used to. It was his compactness, his
stroke production and his technique - it all seemed to gel, and that
was how I felt."
A video, made for Bradman's 90th birthday party, which Tendulkar
attended, showed the two batsmen playing the same shots
simultaneously on a split screen. The similarities of body position,
stroke flow and bat angles are uncanny.
Tendulkar is flattered by these compliments, and you sense it fuels
his determination to work even harder. Every practice session has a
purpose, whether it is to hone his majestic driving or to improve his
single-nudging. Before a Test against Australia in Madras he had a
practice wicket deliberately roughed up outside leg stump for leg
spinners bowling round the wicket to aim at. When Warne went round
the wicket in the match Tendulkar took him apart, making 155 not out.
Where to Lara a net is an occupational hazard, to Tendulkar it is the
laboratory to create clinical perfection. Lara destroys bowling
attacks, Tendulkar dissects them.
And yet there's nothing boring about his batting. It has an appealing
mix of style and brutality, a sort of fusion of Greg Chappell and Viv
Richards, one of his idols. Beautifully balanced, Tendulkar scores at
a run a ball - striking regal cover drives, thumping pulls like
baseball cross-bats - and smites huge, straight sixes off fast
bowlers with his 3lb log of timber. He generates extraordinary bat
speed, but refutes the suggestion that he sets out to dominate the
bowling.
"I don't like this word 'dominate'," he said, taking a breather from
bowling his tantalising little seamers in the Leicester nets last
week. "I don't ever go in with thoughts of dominating a bowling
attack. I just go out and play positive. My game is to play my shots.
If I don't do that, I won't score any runs. I'd rather say I try to
play positive."
He claims he doesn't set himself long-term targets - "that would put
too much pressure on me and make me stiff on the ground" - and is not
even particularly statistically minded. That is perhaps a half-truth,
as all prominent batsmen are at least partly egocentric, as befits
the solo nature of their job, and Tendulkar has precise recall of his
scores and match situations. His favourite innings are invariably
those played on difficult wickets, as if each was a rite of passage.
There's no swagger, in spite of his achievements - the youngest
player to make a first-class century (aged 15), seven Test hundreds
before he was 21, the only player in the post-war era with a
first-class career average of more than 60, etc., etc. Generally,
he's deferential, complimenting the team for their excellent support
rather than dwelling on his own match-winning innings. He plays down
his status. "I've never thought of myself as the best batsman in the
world. My ambition was to be considered one of the best, and to stay
there. But it's more important to play well for your country. That's
what I want most, to continue performing for my country and win as
many games as possible."
His devotion to the concept of 'team' is apparently flawless. After
his bat in the nets he willingly bowls to the others or advises
people on their run-ups and actions. He plays a full part in fitness
sessions and fielding practices, always travels with the group and
doesn't request any preferential treatment. His hotel room in
Leicester is standard, like everyone else's.
Bobby Simpson, the former Australian captain who is helping India
during the World Cup, finds Tendulkar's enthusiasm infectious. "He's
a wonderful listener, always wanting to learn. He's always asking me
to check little things, then in fielding drills, he's like a little
kid with a new toy. It's lovely."
The eulogies continue from Tendulkar's captain, Mohammed Azharuddin.
"I've never seen anyone so balanced. He's a fantastic one-day player
- he's got all the shots. Sometimes we have to tell him to just play,
don't go mad, be normal. He'll get the runs." The New Zealander
Martin Crowe said after a recent Tendulkar century: "He bats like
God."
I bowled against Tendulkar in a match once, when he was playing a
season for Yorkshire and I for Durham. He had glided to 20 when, on a
cabbage patch of a wicket, I produced the ball of my life. Just short
of a length on middle-and-off, it hit a bump, jumped up and jagged
sharply towards the slips. It was unplayable. No one in the world
would have got near it. Tendulkar's reactions were quicksilver. He
adjusted in a flash, but couldn't avoid nicking it to the keeper. It
was a mark of his skill that he got out to it.
In the second innings he seemed to have developed extrasensory
perception, and several similar balls he left at the last moment.
Trying to keep him quiet became an increasingly hopeless task; there
was absolutely no margin for error. He made a hundred, of course, and
Yorkshire won the match.
England play India in three Saturdays' time at Edgbaston. Here's some
simple advice from one old member of the bowlers' union to those
attempting to silence Tendulkar: find those bumps quick, lads, or
else.
Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)