A mixed bag of tributes

In 2000, as the 20th century drew to a close, Wisden commissioned a poll to identify the five top cricketers of the previous 100 years. An electoral college of acclaimed cricket specialists voted unanimously for Don Bradman and near unanimously (90% votes) for Garry Sobers. After that the field spread out. Jack Hobbs made it, a tribute to his longevity and mastery of run-scoring over decades. Among contemporary players only Shane Warne made the cut. Viv Richards was the most recent batsman on the list.

What if Wisden were to do another poll, to identify the five leading cricketers of the past 110 years (1901-2010)? Would there be any changes? It's a fair bet that either Hobbs or Richards would surrender place to Sachin Tendulkar.

In 2000, Tendulkar didn't deserve space on that pedestal. He had scored thousands of runs but not done enough to live up to the promise he had shown as the finest teenaged batsman of all time. There was the massacre of Warne in Sharjah, the fourth-innings hundred against Pakistan in Chennai, the mighty scores in the World Cups of 1996 and 1999. Yet beyond that one had to go back to his early years, to the tour of Australia in 1991-92, for a standout sample of Tendulkar exceptionalism.

The past decade has changed all that. Within months of the Wisden list, in March 2001, India won a famous victory in Kolkata, turned their cricket fortunes around, and finally discovered the team and work ethic Tendulkar deserved. The great man responded as only greatness can, and has just completed the most meaningful decade of his career. Today he matches Hobbs for durability and hunger, and Richards for destructive strokeplay in all formats of the game he has made available to himself.

What of Twenty20, it will inevitably be asked, since Tendulkar plays only domestic and not international Twenty20 games. Actually this makes the comparison with Richards even clearer. The West Indian superstar played some of his most compelling innings for Somerset, especially in cup finals in the English county season. He made Somerset one of the world's most gifted limited-overs sides in the early 1980s. Tendulkar does likewise for Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League.

It is apt then that among the better essays in this collection is one by Peter Roebuck, part of that magical Somerset team of a quarter century ago. In "Classical and Complete", Roebuck sets Tendulkar against Richards. As he writes, "Contemporaries often wished that the Antiguan possessed a little more of Tendulkar's calm and constancy. Current commentators regret that the modern champion lacks the West Indian's ability to grab the moment and shake it till it submits."

Roebuck places Richards (and Sunil Gavaskar) in the context of the 1970s and 1980s. India's original Little Master was the "post-colonial warrior". For Richards, his cricket "was personal". "Always it was about something: a neglected island, a scorned people, a disdained colour, a patronised county. Always there was a certain wrath. Repose was not his temper."

In contrast "Tendulkar has never been an avenging angel": "[He] is comfortable in his own skin and country and team and colour and creed. Richards came to cricket with causes, for Tendulkar cricket is the cause."

Ironically that one assessment also tells us why any book on Tendulkar - biography, set of appraisals, anything - can never rise above a certain pitch. He has been wedded to his art, has no known political views, has hardly been involved in any controversy worth the name, and has made few even mildly indiscreet public statements. There's only so much you can write about Tendulkar. Indeed, to write about him is more an act of worship than an argument.

This book - any Tendulkar book - operates within that constricting framework. Even so, it produces some eminently readable pieces. Osman Samiuddin on Pakistan's relationship with Tendulkar, and Makarand Waingankar on Tendulkar's early years in the hard, edgy school of Mumbai's maidan cricket are recommended.

Mike Coward ("Adopting Sachin") writes on the Australian appreciation of the man but is a trifle more reverential than one would want. Also, there's a notable absence: how does "Adopting Sachin" match up to "Adopting Mr Very Very Special"? Years ago I was stopped by a tour guide leading a multi-country group on a climb up the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Halfway into the sky, with a bunch of cricket-agnostic Americans and Europeans and Japanese waiting, he discovered I was Indian and began discussing VVS Laxman. There's an essay there, but perhaps Coward's saved it for another time.

This book has some great lines, but few better than Suresh Menon's "Batsmen, like detectives in a murder mystery, look for means, motive and opportunity." It comes in a sardonic yet meaningful look at how numbers (10,000 runs, 15,000 runs, 100 centuries, whatever) have chased Tendulkar almost as surely as he has chased them. It pits him against two Australians who provide the bookends to his career - Allan Border and Ricky Ponting - and has an interesting take on how cricket culture down under cherishes genius despite statistics, and how cricket culture in the subcontinent cherishes statistics despite genius.

Amid copybook prose, there is also cross-batted inelegance. In an otherwise fine piece that begins with an account of that day in March 1994 when Tendulkar was promoted to open the innings in a limited-overs international in New Zealand, R Mohan manufactures a horrific line: "[Tendulkar's] batting was probably as safe as that of a virgin at a convention of eunuchs." Ouch.

The biggest disappointments, however, are the essays by the contributors who shared a team huddle with Tendulkar, particularly by two thinking men, Sanjay Manjrekar and Rahul Dravid, who have batted with him. Dravid offers a teaser, writing of how Tendulkar mastered Shane Warne, and of how he fought off a pace attack on a tricky Trinidad pitch in 1997. Regrettably, he pulls his bat out of the way after that.

Some day Dravid - Fry to Tendulkar's Ranji, or maybe Morris to his Bradman - must make amends. Till then, we have our copies of Sachin.

Sachin: Genius Unplugged
edited by Suresh Menon
Westland, Rs 599