Sometimes the future is upon us when we least expect it. Just the other day, there was no batting slot in the Indian team. The so-called Fab Four had locked up the middle order, and later the opening pair had settled themselves in. Now Ganguly is gone, Dravid and Laxman are injured, Yuvraj is yet to score a century after Ganguly’s retirement (although he averages 44 in his last ten Tests, as opposed to 36 overall), and suddenly there are all kinds of possibilities.

A Wridhiman Saha, who would have been mentally prepared for a five-day education from beyond the boundary during the Nagpur Test now finds himself at the deep end. Badrinath gets a chance to make the leap from domestic superstar to international star; Murali Vijay, already being spoken of as the long-term replacement for Dravid, can consolidate.

Of the two reasons for infusing fresh blood – injury and consistently poor team performance – India are dealing with the first. “In the last three or four months we have had someone or the other getting injured and dropping out of the team on a regular basis,” was the philosophical attitude of skipper M S Dhoni, who has said often enough in the past that one man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity.

It wasn’t so long ago – in 1996, in fact - that an injury to Sanjay Manjrekar brought in a young man who evolved into the backbone of Indian cricket. Rahul Dravid hasn’t looked back since.

Depending on whether you call the core of the Indian team in the past decade and more the Fab Four or the Big Five (with Kumble) or the Super Six (with Sehwag), it is becoming increasingly difficult for the surviving members of these exclusive clubs to play together in recent matches owing to injury.

The foursome of Kumble, Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar played together in a record 86 Tests; add Laxman to that list, and the world record is still theirs, with 65 Tests. Bring Sehwag into the equation, and that lot has played 36 Tests together. (the record for six players doing so is held by Australia, 40). These are impressive figures, and speak of a settled team over a long period. They speak of remarkable skill and consistency in all conditions, against all opponents. These are marks the next generation will be aiming at. It would be unfair, of course, to expect a whole new ready-made bunch to slip into the shoes of the masters and carry on as if there has been Read more…

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From nervous child prodigy to one of the sport’s most accomplished players, we look back at 20 years of Sachin Tendulkar

Itzhak Perlman, the violin virtuoso who took his first bow at Carnegie Hall as an 18-year-old, once said: “For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.” After Sachin Tendulkar’s first Test match in Karachi 20 years ago produced just 15 runs and five wicketless overs for 25, hardened cynics might have questioned the wisdom of thrusting a 16-year-old on to such a stage.

A week later, in Faisalabad, there was nowhere to hide. When Tendulkar arrived at the crease to join his Mumbai teammate, Sanjay Manjrekar, India were in disarray at 101 for 4. In a column many years later, Wasim Akram wrote: “It was a lush green wicket, possibly the greenest I’ve seen in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was batting on 20-odd when a ball from me hit him. I immediately asked him if he was alright and he looked me in the eye and nodded. I was a 21-year-old then, so I did not give the matter much thought, but in retrospect that score of 50-odd was the first hint the world got about Tendulkar’s special talent.”

For the world, it was a hint. For the boy himself, it was so much more. “My first innings was a disaster,” he said. “When I walked out at Faisalabad, I told myself that I would do my best to just stay at the wicket, even if I didn’t score runs.” He finished with 59, having stayed at the crease for a shade over 4 hours. And although it didn’t win the Test, or set the pulse racing, it meant a lot to someone thrown in at the deep end. “I said to myself, ‘You can handle this, it’s not a place where you don’t belong.’”

In one of its special issues, Time magazine had Tendulkar’s debut at No. 4 in its list of Top 10 Sporting Moments, behind Michael Jordan’s The Shot (against the Cleveland Cavaliers), Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose being banned from baseball and Arsenal winning the English league title in the last minute of the 1988-89 season. In the years to come, you can take it for granted that thousands will claim that they were at the National Stadium on 15 November when he walked out in an India cap for the first time. In retrospect, it was certainly an I-was-there moment, though few could have imagined that Tendulkar would still be punching the ball through the Read more…

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