Scaling the Peak Twice Over

For three matches, he had crouched and waited for that elusive snick to come his way. At long last, after ages, Harbhajan Singh sent down one of his straighter ones. Dale Steyn prodded at it, playing for the turn. The edge brushed Dhoni’s pads and went almost behind him. An unsighted Rahul Dravid flung himself to his left and stuck out his left hand. The ball hit the Wall and as on 199 previous occasions, it did not bounce off. The man with 200 under the catches column leapt up and broke into a run that was as far from the Rahul Dravid people know as imaginable. And there were reasons.

Twenty four winters ago. Sunil Gavaskar late cut Izah Faqih and ran down the wicket with his bat raised to the sky, celebrating his 10000th run in Test Cricket. He would have liked to go on and make the occasion memorable by scoring his 35th Test Century, but, as shadows lengthened in Ahmedabad, Imran Khan brought one back and trapped the great man leg before wicket for 63.

When asked about the monumental achievement in the comparatively tepid post day interviews of the pre commercialisation days, the master picked his words with characteristic poise and care of the legend that he was. "People always remember the first man on the Moon, the first to climb the Everest. There will be others, but the pioneer is always remembered."

Border, Steve Waugh, Lara, Tendulkar, Ponting, Kallis and Dravid have gone past the monumental milestone since then. To the modern day spectators of the blaring brouhaha called IPL, Sunil Gavaskar may have become some tubby old guy who complains on the microphone about everything that the governing bodies of cricket or the modern batsmen do. But to the connoisseurs, his name is etched as a glittering star on cricket's increasingly fickle walk of fame.

Soon, Sachin Tendulkar will be planting his all conquering insignia on summits till very recently unseen and unknown. Cricket's decimal system will be recalibrated as he completes 15000 Test runs and a hundred international centuries. In both the cases he will be the first and may patrol the singular peaks alone for years to come, maybe till eternity.

When the modern colossus was still searching for the first of his 50 test centuries, some twenty two years back, the land where he was playing his second test series had gone into mad euphoria, celebrating Sir Richard Hadlee's fantastic feat of becoming the first man to take four hundred test wickets. Another island nation that was then trying to find its footing in International Cricket now boasts among its ranks the first man who has doubled that milestone, ending a fairytale career with a dream last test, reaching the largely unthought-of 800 wickets.

All these feats are unique. The dimensions of the cricketing Everest have been redrawn, the eternal journey to improve the skills associated with the game has seen the once unscalable pinnacles revised and reset over and over again.

 It was just before the second world war that, at Manchester, Walter Hammond caught the West Indian wicket keeper Derek Sealy at slip off Bill Bowes to snap up his one hundredth catch in Test Cricket. It was the setting of a cricketing landmark which has to be reached along the most patient, persevering and painstaking paths.

 A batsman in midseason form can come in and cream the bowling to pile up a double century. With conditions and pitch in his favour, a bowler in his prime can blast through half the opposition or more. There is no such opportunity to leverage form and conditions for a fieldsman. He has to wait and wait for the bowler to create that edge, that mistimed stroke, that injudicious adventure. He has to wait for the batsman to walk into the trap, take the bait and make the mistake. All along, he has to stay alert – through the long day in the field, even as the final overs are played out, for the sudden chance to come his way. Sometimes a catchable ball will come to him three times in a session -  while on other occasions, it will come once in an entire five match series. And no matter how spectacular his effort, the number under his catches column will increase by that single solitary notch.

A hundred catches is a measure of the fieldsman's longevity, endurance and continual vigilance. The one who is entrusted to stand in those key positions long enough to create a hundred opportunities to be pouched must of need be the safest pair of hands in a side. Before the days of the credit crisis, the proverbial phrase for these stalwarts would be 'safe as a bank'. And to ensure that they play long enough to continue catching what comes their way that many times, they have to excel at whatever they do to earn their place in the side. All great catchers were wonderful cricketers, even aside from their catching. Mark Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Mahela Jayawardene, to Gary Sobers, Shane Warne, Ian Botham and Biran Lara, to Walter Hammond, Colin Cowdrey, Sachin Tendulkar, Greg Chappel … a hundred or more catches is a roll call of sublime greatness.

And what can one say of someone who has created another Everest on top of the summit of the first one and has climbed it with the calm assurance of unfailing hands?

Like in so many of his cricketing pursuits, Rahul Dravid goes about his day in the field with minimum fuss and quiet perfection. He is not the most spectacular of fielders, even in a side not really famed for its prowess in the ground. He stands in the slips with his weight on the insteps, making sure that rapid movements will come naturally and quick. His face does not show any emotion other than the spontaneous grimace when the ball whisks to the wicketkeeper, missing the outside edge by a hair's breadth. Most often, the more difficult of catches that he takes seem simple enough, with his anticipation and technique carrying him close enough to the ball to grasp it without pyro-techniques.

When the situation does demand, he is not incapable of some of the most athletic movements. Be it catching Herschelle Gibbs at Kolkata in 1996, or Damien Fleming at Adelaide in 2004, or Paul Collingwood at Mohali in 2006 or Dale Steyn at Durban 2010 for his 200th, he can fling himself and take blinders that often leave others short of breath but not him.

It is characterised by his preference for the first slip. After the few initial steps that he took prowling the cover point where he neatly pouched stunners like Lance Klusener at Kanpur 1996, or the beginner's binding forward short leg, where he hurled himself over the same batsman to catch him in Cape Town the following year, he settled down in the first slip and accounted for a major proportion of the wickets of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.

As his expertise grew and he stamped his authority as one of the premier slippers in the history of the game, the very best produced by India, he went about it in the same underplayed accomplished manner than characterises everything about him.

He has already climbed past the peak scaled by Sunny Gavaskar's bat and has gone well beyond. And the more his bat has conversed and negotiated with the most vicious of the questions posed by the lethal bowlers of his time, he has kept his thoughts more and more to himself. No Indian batsman barring, arguably, the rejuvenated Sachin Tendulkar, has won more test matches with the bat than him. Yet he has probably spoken less in his entire career than a Gavaskar or a Ganguly has done after single milestones.

Likewise, his catching has also progressed in steady, sometimes sublime, steps. After a spellbinding effort, he seldom carries the ball all the way to the crowd, teeth bared, fists clenched, pumping up adrenaline and popular imagination. After the brief celebrations with the bunch of guys who understand his value more than anyone else – his ten cronies on the ground – he dusts himself, adjusts his cap, mentally prepares himself for the next ball and takes up his position in the slip for any other snick that may come his way.

It was only today, when he snapped up Dale Steyn for his 200th, that he went into a scampering run, celebrating a catch as never before, ending up on Harbhajan’s lap. And he did have his reasons. He had scaled a peak two fold, redrawn the yardsticks that define the game. For once, the unassuming image indulged in celebration.

Dravid's legendary feats with the bat have forever been caught between the twin headlights of Sachin and Sunny. He went beyond ten thousand, but was preceded there by Gavaskar while Tendulkar reduced the milestone to a mere signpost along the way. He will perhaps not reach fifteen thousand, Sachin will forever be ahead of him in that department. He is inching towards Gavaskar's haul of hundreds but the modern day little master has cut new furrows in the horizon, reducing the landmark to a forgotten piece of the past, obscured by the tailing smoke and embers of his blazing trail.

But, this is one record that will stick like the snicks and edges that have always stuck in his wonderful hands. The first man to reach a double century of catches – from a nation not really known for brilliant fielding. He has not just scaled the Everest, he has discovered a new one in unknown horizons and reached the summit. It is an occasion when even a Wall can afford to display emotions and run wild.

Short Lived : Life and 20-20

I have often voiced the forlorn faith as cricket’s romantic rooter.  The spirit sustaining sentiment that the game involving men in white on the greens reflect the drama that gets played out on the greater stage of life.

It is true. Seldom is any other game swayed by the slightest change of the wind, by the movement of the clouds, by the moisture in the atmosphere and turf. Few other sports combine the earthy ingredients of sweat, shine and spit to manipulate the laws of physics into esoteric outcomes as the reverse swing. Rarely in the arena is one treated to the thrills of diametric differences between the expected and the observed as the twist of the wrist unleashes a wrong 'un.  In no other sport is the inept asked to take on responsibilities that he is not born for, to walk out courageously to fend and prod as a night watchman, and still defy odds and logic to score a hundred the following day. And, as so often in life, we are given a second chance for consolidation or correction, when the openers trot out to begin the second innings, the fast men gear up with the second new ball.

While all that is true, can the attentive reader fail to detect in my words some tentative yearning for the good old days? Is there not more than a hint of what one misses in the modern day game?

Read again. Do I not say men in white as opposed to entertainers in multi coloured pyjamas? Do I not hint at night watchmen and stay clear of the antithetical aberration called pinch hitters? Do I not deliberately dwell on the game moving on from the day to the morrow instead of winding up in the course of a few overs? Do I not look longingly back at a time when the teams by default batted twice and even when the old ball changed into new, it remained as red as ever? Do I not make the cheerleaders shaking hip and more and the cash flaunting, club owning matinee idols conspicuous by their absence?

So, does the game in its modern manifestation, as the glitz and glitter wrapped Babel tower of corporate ambition, continue to echo the facts and fancies of day to day life?

Do Champions League and IPL or Stanford or 20-20 world cups kindle in the soul the same sparks of euphoria of seeing an allegory of life being played out in the forty or so overs?
It is true that I for one struggle to detect the finer nuances and delicate shifts of balance over and over again in the mini version of the game.

Life is faster, some argue, and time is squeezed into small boxes of instantaneous. 20-20 is nothing but a reflection of the jet age, where even the greatest aficionado of grounded beans has to succumb to the ersatz pleasures of instant coffee. Where in these hurtling times is the luxury to pursue a sport that moves slowly over five full days?  People fly across continents, send instant messages, close deals and make financial transactions at the click of a button. This is more than reflected in a game where even walking back to the pavilion is time consuming enough for a solution to be dug out.

And the incorrigible idealist that I am, I disagree. People may hurtle along, but lives are not getting shorter. It is less likely for instant cricket to reflect life than for a wolf whistle to generate the same sweet melancholy that fills up the soul when one hears a Beethoven Piano Sonata.

However, if one looks beyond just the game and focuses at the orbiting mayhem, one does find the reflection of modern times – a microcosm of modern madness.

The gradual conversion of all and sundry of the cricketers and the fringe players, the stars and the side characters, the men close in and in the outfield, into the forty over fold is the story of the current state of human affairs enacted through the hoops corporate cricket circus. As Fredrich Durrenmatt so masterfully demonstrated in his play The Visitor, lure of lavish and lucre engulfs all.

When ex-cricketers, once so vehemently against tarnishing a great game with this short lived incarnation, now flamboyantly wield the microphone doing pitch reports for the battle of corporate franchises, it mirrors the phenomenon of manufactured consent that is the working way of the world.  The commentary box loaded with heavyweights from the past days of glory, shedding their vestige of indignation and studiously analysing agricultural slogs do smack of propaganda akin to the diplomats who claim imperialistic expansions through financial bullying and bomb aided devastation actually liberate the underprivileged world or eminent industrialists claiming a little oil spill never hurt anyone.

When the respected journalists try to write out of their skin to create an illusion of benefit that the twenty over fracas brings to the mother game, one can see an allegory of similar parallels played out in so many levels of the media modelled modern world. In them I see the return of the editor of Illustrated Weekly, 'not a nice man to know', elevating Sanjay Gandhi to the stature of a demi god during the days of the emergency. I see Padma Shree winning journalists carrying their own motivated agenda into print as agents of a political party. I see a so called people’s paper solidly standing behind a nation trampling, crazy talking so called author.

The constant focus of all media on the events, innovating beyond themselves to pitchfork as many tenuously related programs, articles and features as possible into circulation plays out the same drama of FM Channels playing the same number over and over again to make it a hit, books and movies publicised as best sellers and box office hits before release.

In this mad rush for profits, bottom line and mass media brain manipulation, the Lalit Modis of the cricket world so closely parallel the unfettered greed of Satyam, Enron, Lehmann Brothers and later the banking institutions that brought the world to the brink of financial collapse.

Can anything be more demeaning than players themselves being auctioned, put up for sale, much like the medieval slaves who were made to fight as gladiators, with the colloseum madly baying for bets and blood?

Most of the parallels that one can draw with life no longer deal with the noble foundations of human endeavour and pinnacles of achievement that test cricket embodied, but do so with the murky marketplace that the world has been transformed into. And as mentioned earlier, the similarities are to be found more in the action in the fringes than in the middle.

In the larger than life figures of the ShahRukh Khans rooting for their sides from beyond the boundary, one can see the reflection of God and George Clooney selling Nespresso in tandem. The game is now nothing more than a commodity pandered to public with semi naked cheerleaders prancing around at each important and not so important landmark. Much like similar renditions of feminine sex appeal which crop up on billboards and television screens to sell everything from cars, watches to holiday packages. The esoteric essence of the brand has entirely overtaken the action in the middle.  The focus is on weaving it into the fabric of life. Akin to the Just Do It slogan that relegates the shoes and tee shirts manufactured in the sweat shops of Asia by malnourished children into the background, just like the yellow arches that eclipse the undone meat shoved between stale pieces of bread.

As fans flock to cheer the teams named in baseball style, across as many tournaments as can be crammed into a calendar stretched to limits, test matches are neglected by administrators and adherents alike. And here too one notices a curious parallel to the ironies of existence. The milkman has to vend his products from door to door, but the liquor den is always full of rabble.

To me, tweny twenty divides the cricket world, into the connoisseur and the commoner.

In this world, there will always be toddy and milk, Harold Robbins and Shakespeare, masala movies and magic on celluloid, a handful of readable magazines amidst two hundred gossip tabloids. Which will sell more is less than a rhetoric question, in the realms of an axiom. However, it is subtlety and sophistication repelling the hordes that go on to make something special.

I would rather continue my romance with the game than give in to the urges of a wham bam affair.

Oh for a Cardus in the Covers

The reason I write these blogs is that I am an incurable romantic.

To me cricket is not just a game in which a battle ensues between two teams armed with the willow and the leather and in the end there is a winner and a loser.

Cricket is much more than that. It is a game of infinite refinement, of perilous swings of fortunes, of subtle changes of balance, of rising hopes and of breaking hearts. It has adequate room in the great green fields to welcome swaggering heroism and ubiquitous workmanship, sophisticated stroke play and raw energy of the tearaway paceman, the creatively casual leg spinner and the ever busy poucher behind the stumps. Each one has to perform roles they are capable and not so capable of. The fortunes depend on the vagaries of soil and sun, clouds and wind, perfection of technology and the frailty of human decision. In its versatility, cricket is life itself encapsulated in a story that unfolds over five days, a symbolic allegory of existence, scripted in poetry, drama and skilful performances.

Thus to me, the game should be described in a language befitting its appeal. In the lyrical lilt of words that were used when poets wrote ballads about heroes. The poignancy of an  impressionist paintbrush to mix the dollops of colours spreading on the canvas to describe a starry night, a field of poppies or a party on a boat.

Hence I yearn for the good old days when a Neville Cardus merged music and reportage into compositions which played on the pages of print and struck a chord of symphony in the psyche of the reader, enticing him to the grounds in the want of encores.

Here is what he writes about Archie McLaren on an innings of the master as he neared his final days as a batsman., "He was the noblest Roman of them all. The last impression in my memory of him is the best. I saw him batting in a match just before the (1914) war; he was coming to the end of his sway as a great batsman. And on a bad wicket he was knocked about by a vile fast bowler, hit all over the body. Yet every now and then one of the old imperious strokes shot grandeur over the field. There he stood, a fallible MacLaren, riddled through and through, but glorious still. I thought of Turner's 'The Fighting Temaraire' as MacLaren batted a scarred innings that day, and at last returned to the pavilion with the sky of his career red with a sun that was going down."


Compare and contrast this to the convoluted hash of similes  "Amir is a bee, Asif is a snake" and atrocious adjectives such as "ballsy stroke" inflicted on  thousands of readers in the form of current tripe that passes for sports writing.

It is this aspect of the modern day game that grieves me most, even more than the cheerleaders who swing their hips and more to the boundaries in a 20-20 game as Lalit Modi and company count the money to be made on greedy, grubby fingers. The game is popular as never before, in all its different time and over bound manifestations. To touch upon an obvious and unpleasant topic, cash in cricket is more abundant than ever, the once pleasurable pastime of amateurs is literally lolling about on lucre. Media frenzy has taken it over in a wave of capitulation. Words uncountable fly about on the happenings on the field and even more depicting the intriguing stuff that transpires away from it. And to me it seems that most of these written words stink from severe smear of mediocrity, even ineptitude, that has become the hallmark of columns and bylines.

When Jack Hobbs got out to an edge, even in the dismissal Cardus would pay him a tribute. His peerless observation would be, "A snick by Hobbs is a sort of disturbance in the cosmic orderliness." Now we have self important columnists earning their living by writing "Tendulkar got out to a foolish stroke". A noun, a verb and an opinionated adjective do make a sentence. Add a senile ex Australian skipper behind it and it may even venture into being lousy reporting. But it does not amount to writing in the slightest refined sense of the word.

With articles aplenty in the effort to grab TRP, sound bytes, column space, page hits, there is a mad rush for converting unstructured thoughts into half baked pieces and forcing them through the eyeballs of the readers. A lot of the masses are satisfied with the cliche ridden news and opinions even as the discerning hurt, ache and pine for the days of Cardus and Arlott. The sheer numbers make the industry overflow with scribes of impotent pens, who need a lot of careful handling to rise halfway to the occasion, ejecting their pitifully meagre creative juices. The ones promising much tend to get shrouded by the multitude or lend their names to too many bylines.

Cardus produced a heady mix of cricket and music while John Arlott brought poetry into reportage. Both of them have departed beyond the far pavilions, to the world where timelessness is not bound by editorial deadlines. Nowadays a Scyld Berry comes few and far between, a Peter Roebuck makes for rewarding reading with interludes while much of Harsha Bhogle is limited to halting words about topics his heart does not care for but his employers do. An epic test match can move one to Homeric epithets, as the match winning 73 by VVS showed in the recent past. But, can anything but drab, calculating financial articles be drafted about the Champion's League? Yet that is what seems to be Bhogle's main theme nowadays.

So, while in the yesteryears, a late cut by Don Bradman would be described as 'dismissed the ball from his presence', a Frank Worrell drive to cover point would be 'persuading the ball to go on its way', today most often even a sublime flick of the wrists from the blade of the most graceful of batsmen would be put down in time tested cliche as 'finding the gaps with ease'.

The problem is that while Cardus believed that  "We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination.", the universe is changing rapidly. What remains standing in memory and history is rapidly becoming the career earning of a cricketer and the franchise that employs him.

The situation can be summarised through a thought experiment. In these days, when the corporations, the media, the sponsors, the franchises, the betting syndicates, the political bigwigs, film actors and cheerleaders – everyone hangs on to the outcome of a match, imagine the reaction when the event is washed off by inclement weather. Disappointment. Anger at the gods of rain for inflicting losses all around? The tabloids masquerading as newspapers and websites reporting it as 'Match washed out' or the more imaginative 'Rain plays spoilsport' or the incisive 'Lack of foresight on the part of organisers leads to losses'.

Who in these materialistic days can combine beauty, lyrics, music and philosophy to describe the event as Cardus would have done in one sentence?  'The elements are cricket's presiding geniuses' ... Oh for a Cardus in the covers.

The Importance of a Harbhajan Hundred

Harbhajan Singh's rollicking century on the last day of the Ahmedabad test match is one of those unique facets of the game that make it fascinating.

The readers of this blog know me to be a purist. I am someone who closes his eyes after each Tendulkar straight drive or a Laxman whip to the mid wicket, to allow the sensation to sink into the senses, to deposit the memory of the strokes forever into accessible chambers of remembrance. Isn't it odd for me to revel in the brutal launch of counter attack where caution is perpetually projected into the wind and the bat is as much a tool of artistry as a chainsaw used in the Texas massacre?

Perhaps it is not that  unnatural to be moved. The delights of cricket go beyond dexterity and skill.

While artistry and technique are very much the elements of batsmanship that makes us return to the ground over and over again, almost willing our maestros into orchestrating spontaneous encores, the raw excitement of engaging in a game of chance and coming out the winner has its own attractions. During this recent innings, Harbhajan manufactured yet another stroke from unwritten handbooks that will never share shelf or library with coaching manuals, the spectators went through the same thrill that one feels when a pair of dice rolls on the green velvety surface of casino tables, the closing bell rings on the day's business of stock market  or the notice board puts up the result of an entrance examination.

In many a sense, test cricket resembles life. As in events outside the stadium, not everything plays out according to script. A lot depends on chance.

In life, many a times we have to stick to endeavours not entirely suited to our skills and potential. Circumstances in life make us work at jobs that we hate, sometimes live with people we abhor, make career choices based on wants and not desires, take up unwanted responsibility because of personal situations. Hence we tend to look at sportsmen with diversion from drudgery, touched with a tinge of envy, grudgingly accepting that here is someone who is doing what he loves, someone blessed with the choice of fate.

However, here is where cricket brings shades of realism into the proceedings. Especially when a tailender walks out to bat or when a part time bowler rolls his arm over.

Seldom in any other sport is a player called upon to perform something that is not his craft. Few other tussles in the arena has participants in the middle trying to grope their way through something they are not comfortable at, while being under the spotlight, with millions watching across the world. A Michael Johnson is never asked to run the marathon. A Diego Maradona is never asked to stand under the bar as ten others romped around the field. Michael Schumacher is asked to drive and not to change the wheels in the pit. The closest one can think of is Ivan Lendl huffing and puffing on grass, trying to get his hands on that elusive Wimbledon title.

But, in cricket, Harbhajan Singh has to put his pads on and go out to bat. So does Chris Martin and Monty Panesar. So in the days of yore did Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Phil Tufnell, Bob Willis and Glenn McGrath. On the other hand, sometimes critical circumstances propel Sachin Tendulkar into bowling his leg spinners and Ted Dexter to try out his little swingers and cutters. And when the not so gifted men battle the guile of the masters of the trade to end up on top, the spectators are treated to a sight of hope, the victory of the underdog.

The charm of cricket lies as much in these small sidelights as in the triumph of talent. Not one of  the seventeen five wicket hauls contributing to 307 test wickets delighted Fred Truemann more than any of his three first class centuries. 'Scratch the surface of any fast bowler and you will find a very frustrated batsman' he used to say in his inimitable Yorkshire drawl. And for the hundreds of tormenting deliveries bowled by Glen McGrath, his brightest smile was flashed the day he got his only fifty at the highest level. I wonder whether either of his triple hundreds made Virender Sehwag as happy as his five wicket haul.

Life is a struggle against destiny. Men keep trying to ward off the unseen reverse swings and googlies of  fate bowled at them on the wicket of life, pitching hesitant decisions into the fray, hoping fortunes won't come striding out to hit them out of the ground. Here a nightwatchman scoring a century, the tail ender hanging in for four hours to save a test match, the part time leg spinner bowing on the fifth day footmarks and picking up vital wickets in the fourth innings are symbols of faith. Proof that one can survive and succeed even against intimidating odds. It is the coup of hope over destiny, of grit and luck against the odds of logic and nature.


And when Harbhajan Singh strokes his way to a hundred, we can rejoice. It restores belief that turning the table on fate can be achieved with a sense of frolic, with unrestrained relish for impossibility, with a bubbling sense of humour, a twinkling eye on the lighter side of life.

I 'Like' whatever has been posted on this Wall

From the days she managed to shower the enigmatic Avatar with 108 distinct names, India has patented an ingenious manner to bestow monikers. Sobriquets and epithets that somehow emerge in public consciousness, grow in popularity and then uniquely identify the more famous children of the nation – specifically that characteristic of the hero that captures the mass. Most often, these nicknames have uncertain origin but overwhelming consensus, to the degree that birth certificates and telephone directories aside, the popular title becomes more definite as identifier  than the original christening.

Mahatma and Bapu both evoke images of the father of the nation – irrespective of whether one swears by unbendable Gandhian principles or belongs to the neo-urban generation of Bapu bashers. Universal reverence enabled Bal Gangadhar Tilak to turn into Lokmanya, and leadership qualities at two extreme ends of the nation made two noble names transform into Sardar and Netaji.

The phenomenon is not limited to the field of freedom fighters. In literature, Rabindranath Tagore was presented with the mantle of kabiguru, and in spite of being much younger than the venerable heads of politburo in his state, only one left hander ended up as the true dada.

Among all these saluting sobriquets, one rises up distinctly different from others. 'The Wall' is a name that sits immovable on the best ever one down batsman to have ever played for the country. The word Dravidian has taken on a new meaning in the last decade and a half – moving away from the ancient origins of a civilisation as old as time, across the geographical expanse of the southern parts of India and now denotes the broad blade which has for years thwarted the most diabolic of deliveries. And 'The Wall' has taken flight from the psychedelic cover art of Pink Floyd audio cassettes and CDs to take guard on the cricket field  as a safe citadel for the coveted wicket.

In keeping with the tradition of Indian epithets, the nick characterises what the country has come to identify with Rahul Dravid. Immovable, impregnable stolidity …  unperturbed shield of courage, defending the nation from every invading foreign force and weaponry year after year after year. It is definitely the popular image of the man who has batted on and on for the last fourteen years.

Yet, I find it distinct from the other nicknames discussed above.
At the risk of shooting myself in the foot by firing off an elitist versus mass argument , I will still argue that the primary reason for the difference is that unlike the rest it is an English moniker.

The argument that this is because cricket is an English pastime, elitist among the Indian playing fields, is dated. Since 1983, it has transformed into an Indian game which by some quirk of fate was accidentally invented by the English. And in spite of globalisation and the internet infestation of the country, the mass appeal for the sport in the remotest corners of the country is unparalleled. The aam admi still has a great voice when it comes to popular icons. Tendulkar, with his universal appeal, is still lovingly called Tendya. Ganguly is not the Big Brother but dada. Sehwag is not a blitzkrieg or a double o seven, but goes by the regal and regional  Najafgarh ka Nawab. Compared to these, The Wall is a substantial urban leap. English epithets are not unknown, but in order to capture popular imagination they have for ever been restricted to the striking and limited imageries found in 'Tiger' Pataudi or the Rawalpindi 'Express'. The sophistication and stretch of the nickname Wall has a lot to convey, not only about Rahul Dravid's skills at keeping his wicket intact, but also about the essential attractions of his game and the nature of his followers.

If Tendulkar is endowed with the allure of an epic novel that enthrals, edifies and educates, Laxman a brilliant collection of sonnets that are lyrical and lilting,  Sehwag a masterpiece which reads like a fast paced thriller, Ganguly a popular novel filled in equal measures with pieces of beauty and unreadable pulp, Rahul Dravid is akin to an elegant exposition of mathematical arguments or grammatical structures, timeless in significance, enjoyable to few but the absolute connoisseurs of the subject.

His game is too perfect, too correct, too neat to have endless popular appeal. Based too much on technical precision than the heady natural talent that Indians have forever been used to worship. The elegant and academic beauty of a perfect forward defensive push, the logical extension of the same into an impeccable drive through the covers, the scientifically accurate moment of connection to send the ball between mid on and the bowler, the productive yet flash free square cut, even the traditional strokes of adrenaline enhancing adventure –  the pull, hook and sweep –  played with copybook correctness and minimum of risk … the masses are not swayed by such perfection.

After ten thousand runs in one day internationals, after a stupendous 92 off 63 balls a few weeks earlier, after only a handful of very recent failures, he was dropped from the limited overs side in a curious decision. However, there was no effigy of Dilip Vengsarkar going around in flames. No demonstrations were held across the streets of Bangalore. Petitions floated to re-include him in the team had to make do with a few signatures.

Contrast this with the reaction to the dropping of Sourav Ganguly in 2006, after the southpaw had averaged in the mid thirties for over a period of five years and fifty plus test matches, a comfortable twenty runs per innings behind his celebrated middle order companions. Indian masses love a flawed talent – whose vulnerability and emotions are almost palpable enough to touch. Resolute perfection, with a face as readable as the most seasoned poker player, is not something that equates with the popular image of a hero. The very same reason why subtlety in Bollywood movies is circumspect by its absence but for rare ventures of brilliance, mostly made for the intellectual elites and later a section of the multiplex crowd.

However, that is not to imply that Rahul Dravid's phenomenal achievements with the bat have not won him a fan following.

After he was dropped and was busy ignoring journalists to make a double hundred for Karnataka, Cricinfo was loaded with visitors numerous enough to become inaccessible to slower browsers – a rarity for domestic cricket. Well articulated and concisely argued articles in newspapers, magazines, web site and blogs spoke eloquently against what seemed to most to be the gravest of injustice. The responses were sophisticated, rational and – to use a dubious term for the country - parliamentary. Every time his name comes up in discussions, there are advocates of his greatness who voice their opinions with reason, but generally stay clear of foul mouthed abuse exchange so frequent in the internet message boards of our passionate country. Even in this series of blog posts, there have been numerous requests made to me to write about the Wall – and all of these requests are polite and  measured … not really characteristics we identify with the common Indian fan who runs around wrapped in the tricolour, burns effigies and sits in busy traffic intersections to protest against some slight to his hero.

Dravid is appreciated by a distinct category of fans, that group of devotees who marvel at technical perfection, to whom concentration and application that goes behind a superbly negotiated late in-swinging delivery with the score reading 4 for one hold more value and merit than a hastily slogged six. There tends to be a marked social correlation between the admirers of the straight batted defensive stroke and the ones who would be rather seen dead than in the streets burning effigies. This is the same group who would actually appreciates the now famed urban sobriquet – The Wall.

But, even though The Wall is how the populace thinks of him, is it enough to characterise all the facets of the maestro's batting?

I beg to differ. Even to the most clamouring and irrational modern cricket 'fan', it is clear that Dravid has been the greatest match winning batsman in the recent times – till the advent of the rejuvenated Sachin Tendulkar. He averaged 102.84 while scoring over 2500 runs in the 21 matches won during the Sourav era. This is simply not possible with purely defensive technique. What we casually overlook while focusing on his impregnable defence is that he is perhaps the first Indian batsman to possess every stroke around the wicket with equal amount of risk eliminated perfection. The revenue more than speaks for his versatility in scoring all over the oval. At the same time, he has also scored some of the faster fifties in One Day Internationals. So, what gives the impression of one dimensional defensive technique?

The explanation is that while batting for the country the excessive element of  determination and focus to hold on to his precious wicket makes him avoid the slightest of risk in his strokes, making him eschew adventurous endeavours that he is more than capable of undertaking. Except for the occasional square cut off the front foot, he does not show the slightest inclination towards unorthodoxy in test cricket.

In matches of lesser importance – first class games for his state, domestic limited over showdowns – I have seen him clout the ball over the ropes with élan, giving a freeflowing expression to his batsmanship that he seldom indulges in at the highest level. I remember his four sixes in a fourth innings Irani Trophy hundred when he and Laxman sealed a win against a fighting Mumbai. I remember him stepping out and clouting Sourasish Lahiri onto the remote tiers of the stands in a Challenger Trophy encounter. He is more than capable of attractive hitting and once in a while comes out with the full array of his strokeplay. He did once straight drive Alan Donald for six in a one day international in Durban, a most extraordinary and surprisingly unanalysed stroke. A straight batted pull in his third test match during an explosive forty against Australia still remain fondly remembered. But, ever since he was given the role of the number 3 in test matches, he put a severe price on his wicket, allowing the beauty of his batsmanship to shine through technical perfection and results.

That is not to say that he is selfish in his approach. One can find few examples of a batsman losing his wicket trying a reverse sweep when on 270. Few middle order maestros have taken up the challenge and opened the innings while captaining the side. But, with there seldom being an opening combination that got going on a regular basis before the Delhi duo of Sehwag and Gambhir, he gave the impression of being that Rock of Gibraltar at the top of the middle order that people will remember him as. That Great Wall of India.

People increasingly tend to notice chinks and crevices in the brickwork that presage winds of change blowing into the dressing room. However, something formed over years, brick by brick, takes a long while to be dismantled … and I believe when it is time, he will know it before anyone else and The Wall will depart without crumbling, with the same amount of dignity with which he has played the game and conducted himself in public eye.

 Till then I can say with conviction that I 'like' everything that has been posted on this Wall for the last one and a half decades.

Problems of an All Time XI - (including With or Without Hair?)

In your all time XI, would you choose the young Sachin Tendulkar of 1998 or the vintage run machine of 2010?

Wouldn't it be a delight if those eternal entertainers on green ovals could travel across time and play in clashes across eras? Can any traditional cricket lover not be enthralled at the imagined sight of Virender Sehwag walking in to open the innings with Victor Trumper while Dennis Lillee limbers up with Harold Larwood?

These flights of flannelled fantasy leads to the fascination of All Time Elevens – a pastime every enthusiast has allowed his fancy to indulge in.

Neville Cardus, in articles of comparative levity – although no less delightful in perusal – often came up with weird teams across space and time, with criteria as macabre as 'Eleven with Odd Names'.

Sunil Gavaskar confesses that along with Peter Roebuck, he spent his hours in the slips for Somerset by creating all sorts of elevens. And the popularity of the recent project of Cricinfo, of choosing elevens for each nation, underlines the endearing and everlasting appeal of having our heroes of one era share dressing rooms with the stalwarts of others. Geoff Boycott has even written a four hundred page book on the best elevens of test playing nations.

I myself have been making up teams ever since cricket consciousness emerged over the horizon of my childhood and works by Cardus, Arlott, Beanaud and Cozier first infiltrated, and gradually ruled, my shelf space. From all time elevens for nations, I soon graduated to more complicated stuff. It took hold of my leisure hours in school and a great part of not so leisure hours of the college and professional years, to the extent of my coming up with all time Ranji teams, County elevens, Sheffield Shield sides … and soon teams that were actually bizarre.

I spent a large part of a year of excruciating cubicle existence by preparing and refining elevens made with each letters of the alphabet. Hard to believe? How about an A team comprising of Dennis Amiss, Saeed Anwar, Zaheer Abbas, Hashim Amla, Mohammed Azharuddin,  Warwick Armstrong, Gubby Allen, Les Ames, Wasim Akram, Curtly Ambrose and  Ghulam Ahmed. And a B XI – Geoff Boycott, Bill Brown, Don Bradman, Ken Barrington, Alan Border,  Ian Botham, Mark Boucher, Richie Beanuad, Alec  Bedser, Sid Barnes and Bishen Bedi.
I'll stop … it is addictive and never ending. Besides, I can never decide on the opening pair when I get to H. Hobbs, Hutton, Haynes, Hunte, Hanif, Hayden …. well …

However, after two and a half decades of cricket watching, I am slightly circumspect about this exercise. Putting names on paper is obviously always a pleasurable and sometimes passionate pastime, but as I have followed the career of players over decades and have seen them as evolving performers and not names staring out at me from a page of cricket writing, old scorecards or tables of statistics, I find some questions tugging at my fantasies as I etch elevens in imagination.

Cricketers, as any other human being, evolve over time. Some get better, some skills wane, some remain consistent over the years. If we look at truly great performers, we find more or less the same career average graph over the span of his exploits. However, with the passing of time, the mind, body and spirit undergo invariable change. The speed of the eye is slowed down that wee bit by the weight of the years and is compensated by that extra experience. The nimble feet become more economic in motion and the mercurial movements lean more towards safety rather than scintillation.

When I see a Sachin Tendulkar in an all time eleven, I pause to wonder which edition of the champion we will see on the fictional field. Will it be the irrepressible eighteen year old stroking his way to a century on the fast and furious Perth, the mature middle order maestro in mid twenties as he marauds over Shane Warne provoking nightmares, the sedate, sober, secure statesman of Sidney 2003 concentrating along to 241 or the relentless run machine in his late thirties who continues to score double hundreds more frequently than ever before?

When Don Bradman returned to competitive cricket after the war, he piled on runs as ever, scoring his  customary centuries with metronomic regularity. However, even though his average improved over the second half of his career (a mind boggling feat that, considering a 99.94 career average), eye witnesses recounted that it was easier to make a trip to the tavern for a beer then than during the halcyon days of his early period, when missing a minute was akin to closing eyes to history.  So, which one of them plays in the Australian team? Someone we can count on to score three hundred in a day, or the other version who can bat for eternity as the innings grows around him?

It is more so with fast bowlers – whose trade is most savagely touched by time. Will we look at a Dennis Lillee of the mid seventies, the fiery tearaway whose very sight froze the best of batsmen at the crease? Or will it be the older wilier version sporting that headband, scary pace making way for clever variations, picking up wickets with similar frequency, in a slightly more humane manner.

With time, Kumble added venom to his orthodox leg break even as his shoulder became weary from the toils. Warne kept proclaiming new mystery deliveries, Viv Richards walked out with the same swagger with varying results.

Even fielding positions need to be thought of with care. Should Dravid be the youthful, agile newcomer – hovering in the short leg? Or should he be the eternal poker faced first slip, serene and still, occasionally taking time off to snap up blinders that leave others speechless but not him? 
Should we have in our team a young electric Clive Lloyd patrolling the covers, the lone man in front of the wicket as the four fast bowlers torment the opposition batting with six slips, leg slip and short leg? Or will he be the giant of a man standing in the slips, waiting to gobble up those fast and frequent edges.

For someone like Sehwag, I may get away asking whether it will be the version with hair or without. But for most of the other names that one is likely to encounter on an all time list, there needs to be a time stamp as well to qualify which snapshot of the evolving career we are including in our team.

How can a captain decide on strategy or batting order or bowling options without knowing which brand of the great cricketer he was carrying in his team? Who will play the role of the innings builder, the stroke player, the stock bowler, the strike bowler to be used in short spells? Who will stand in slip and who will be in the covers?

So we start our team with Gavaskar (1971), Sehwag (with/without hair – the time does not  really matter), Dravid (2004), Sachin (1998) … Now we know exactly what we are talking about.

But, then we are faced with another dilemma.

There are some players who peaked at a particular period – during which sublime stage they were right at the top of the world. However, their time at the peak were short lived.

If we decide on players with time stamps, can we not pick those super successful streaks? In the time stamped Indian team that we were just making – and I find the Cricinfo choice of Hazare and Mankad at 5 and 6 surprising to the point of inanity – should we go for Laxman 2003, when our wristy wizard was perhaps manufacturing his best masterpieces? Or should we pick Dilip Vengsarkar of 1986-87, who was acknowledged as the best batsman of the world during that period -  averaging over 100 in 16 tests, and rated by the computer to be ahead of contemporaries Gavaskar, Richards, Border, Gower and Miandad?

Should we go for Zaheer Abbas of 1982 or Yousuf Youhana of 2006?  Erapalli Prasanna of 1967 or Harbhajan Singh of 2001?
Too many complications.

We can keep it simple by agreeing on the following steps.
1. The greatness of a cricketer is stamped when he succeeds over a long, long period of time … a testimony to his longevity, consistency and class. (Takes care of the short peaks of good but not great players)
2. Each of these long serving players need to be tagged with a date stamp to enable us to decide the exact entity we are including in our eleven.
3. We need to live with the fact that the player is limited to the time stamp.

So, as the first step, we will definitely go ahead and choose Dravid and Laxman ahead of Vengsarkar of 86 and Amarnath of 82.
Next, we will tag 1998 against the  name of Tendulkar. (It can be any other vintage year of the maestro, 1998 is just an example)
And finally we need to remember that he will have the ability to smack Warne out of the ground even with a mistimed loft over mid on against the spin, but will be prone to guide an innocuous ball down the throat of the point fielder much more often than the run machine of 2010. There will be spectacular centuries, but most often they will not mature into epic double hundreds.

The task of choosing elevens is so fascinating that I can keep writing on and on … While there are several people who ask questions about the utility of such diversions, my answer is the following. If we can use our imagination to move forward and backward in time, and then follow it up by bringing together some of the men in white who have captured our fancy over the ages, why not indulge ourselves?

Time is a dimension that flows forward forever. The relentless passage of the moments make the magic of the masters of the cricket field – as in any other experience of life – so precious. It is only in our imagination that the river can flow backward, from the sea to the source, picking the banks and shores where our memories linger the happiest.

When Mutthiah Muralitharan reached 800 wickets to bring about a fairytale end to his test career, could any genuine cricket lover have checked his secret tears at the sudden realisation that the master would never again trundle up to spin his web around helpless batsmen?

However, in the subconscious of my cricket loving psyche he will play on – as the supreme off spinning spearhead of the All Time Sri Lankan side, doubling up with Stuart McGill or Arthur Mailey as the spin twin of my M XI,  maybe bowling in tandem with Bill Bowes in the team composed of players with first and last names beginning with the same letter of the alphabet, as Richie Richardson watches from the slips.

(Finally : Thanks a lot for your comments … I really appreciate it and they spur me on to write more. Let me know your feedback as usual and whether you would be interested in elevens of such curious compositions. If there is a great audience, I will be happy to oblige)

Three Amigos and a Young Man

Still in safe hands

It is one of the adrenaline charging high points of watching cricket when the young debutant, under suffocating pressure, comes out of the restricting cocoon of inhibition and self doubt, and emerges with self expression and stroke play as a promise of the future.

Cheteshwar Pujara’s courageous counter attack in the fourth innings at Bangalore was fascinating, sending the country into passionate celebrations.  He drove with authority and executed thrilling pulls. And as has become so predictable to the point of puerile, there followed in the wake of the innings mass manufacture of laudatory lines, clichéd columns and praise-ful pages across the curious popular entertainment platform – also known as the media.

Sensation scavenging and controversy addicted, the scribes of the sporting pages and web sites, and the hosts of television channels, have gone about earning their despicable daily bread by provoking mass speculation and sentiments with that exceptional gift that characterises Indian journalism – of putting the instant success on a precarious pedestal from where one false stroke will result into a headlong plunge into the quagmire of criticism.  And while elevating a one innings hero to the ranks of greatness, they have allowed their articles provoke the fickle fan frenzy to step on the achievements of some of the greatest names of Indian cricket with mud caked shoes of yellow journalism.

There have been suggestive speculations hinting at contrasts with a typical Dravid counter in similar circumstances, and wondering if this is not the opportune moment to replace the ageing maestro with the youthful new hero.

Well, Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara, the latter shrewdly promoted by the team management, did counter attack to conquer the fancy of the Indian fan, laying the foundations of a memorable victory. But they had been batting with the secure knowledge that in their wake waited a safety net of 26000 runs and 78 centuries. If they got out, the next two men at the wicket would be Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. That very thought would have allowed them to go about their task with the gay abandon of youthful adventure.
What if Sachin and Dravid had come together at the fall of the second wicket, with a 200 plus score staring at them and sitting in the pavilion with pads on were Pujara and Raina? Could they have indulged in aggressive tactics like the young duo? Cricket changes with circumstances, and comparisons cease to hold water at some levels.

And even as we rejoice in a batting hero after all these years of waiting for one, can we actually claim that this victory looked  a remote possibility with Australia putting on 476 and India struggling at 38 for two? Without one timeless champion coming in and turning things around with 267 runs in the match? Novelty sells papers, magazines, raises the TRP and increases webpage hits, but it cannot replace the experience gleaned through more than 300 test matches with one innings.

In the last dozen years, India has won more than 50 test matches, doubling their number of wins from the earlier sixty six years of test cricket. And in all but 4 of those occasions, one or more of the trio of Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman, have fired and got substantial scores. A piece of statistics that makes you sit up and realise the enormity of the contribution to Indian cricket by these three gentlemen.

Sehwag will definitely play on for a few years. It is difficult to measure and analyse the mind and methods of this curious cricketer, but one of the reasons for his cavalier approach to batting is probably that he is secure in the knowledge that at one down will come in the broad bat of Rahul Dravid, at two drop the genius of Sachin Tendulkar, and after them the calm conjurer in the guise of VVS Laxman.   The only two other successful opening batsmen who come remotely close to matching Sehwag’s murdering methods in the not too distant past are Mathew Hayden and Gordon Greenidge. The bowling attacks of the teams they played in varied vastly, but still there remain parallels are aplenty. Their methods contributed to their teams being the most successful ones of their times. While Greenidge went about scoring runs with the shelter of Haynes, Richards, Lloyd and Larry Gomes around him, Hayden did so with the assurance of Langer, Ricky Ponting, the Waughs, Martyn and later Clarke and Hussey to follow, with someone called Adam Gilchrist as an additional security to fall back on. Will Sehwag, with that celebrated uncluttered mind, manage to play with the same fluency if the next three names to follow are Rohit Sharma, Pujara and Raina? Oodles of talent may jiggle around between them, but there will be some 33000 runs and 94 centuries less in assets.  Figures that make one realise that perhaps one solitary innings of 72 is not all that big a deal as yet.

I try to imagine what the Indian line up will look like a couple of years from now. No impregnable Wall making his way to defend the country after the quick loss of a wicket, dapper and dignified, every aspect of gesture, grandeur and gear embodying the immaculate cricketer. No compulsive cheer at the fall of the second wicket, the moment for which a nation waits, the trot of the little big man to the wicket, that lean into the cover drive, that look at the heavens after yet another hundred. No magician walking out next, spreading calm with lazy elegance, wristing the balls to unthought-of regions of the green oval, delighting the cockles of the heart with a whip to the mid wicket. And in the field, no reliable assurance of the bucket hands of Dravid at first slip, no cheerful Laxman at the second, no exuberant little man sprinting around like a teenager in the outfield.

When they turn their backs on us

What would it be like? A sequel to The Three Musketeers without Athos, Porthos and Aramis? An impressionist exhibition without Degas, Monet and Renoir? A Manhattan skyline without the World Trade Centre, the Chrysler and the Empire State Building? A Friends episode without Ross, Chandler and Joey? The Ivy League without Harvard, Princeton and Yale? Social Networking without Facebook, Linked In and Twitter? A Marx Brothers production without Groucho, Chico and Harpo? For the Bollywood savvy Indian fans, a remake of Dil Chahta Hai without Amir, Saif and Akshaye?

A feeling of emptiness in the soul even as we contemplate. Cheteshwar Pujara has shown a lot of promise. Definitely it is the time to groom him as the understudy, to prepare those young, quick stepping feet for the enormous shoes that they will put on with time. However, for now, even as we rejoice sitting at the pinnacle of test playing world, let us enjoy the blessings of the three amigos as long as we are able to.

A Nation Walks with Sachin

It started when I started sneaking surreptitiously out of the strict confines of a Roman Catholic institution to follow the exploits a fellow schoolboy whose blazing trail had just been sparked off in neighbouring Pakistan.
Two decades later, the trail continues to blaze along pristine paths where no mortal has treaded before. And now, as a supposedly responsible manager, I creep with a careful ALT+TAB past the forbiddingly workmanlike windows, to peep at his continuing saga of success in the pages of Cricinfo. While he sustains the insatiable appetite to score more and more, I retain the childish craving to break the rules to follow his awe-inspiring achievements. The ageless wonder has also managed to keep me mentally young.

The story of Tendulkar has for long been intertwined with the story of the young Indian growing up in the eighties and nineties. His meteoric rise in the late eighties and early nineties was representative of the spark of genius which shone on painfully rare occasions in a very prolonged while in the field of Indian sports and games, rising from the shadows of despondence that defined the arena of a developing nation. But, even as a country battled with the remnants of bureaucracy, the adamant refusal to computerisation and open economy, and chugged along with drastically dated information about the world, a teenager showed that change was around the corner. It was reflected in the audacity as he stroked the ball, throwing caution and the baggage of the past to the winds, carving the revered Qadir for consecutive sixes, hitting the knighted Hadlee inside out over the covers, taking on the might of the Aussies at the fast, furious Perth while established pillars of batting crumbled around him like pieces of brittle bread. Impossibility was just about to be redefined, limits re-laid.

With the coming of globalisation, slowly but surely, India emerged as a force to reckon with. Along with the newfound confidence of being a player in the world in her own right, Team India too underwent metamorphosis. The 27 for two specialist of the team no longer had the enormous responsibility of carrying the burden of batting on his own shoulders. He was no longer forced to ensure that India qualified for the finals at Sharjah before proceeding to loft those sixes off Kasprowicz and Fleming to try for an impossible win, bearing the brunt of the media if his single handed attempt at the impossible did not come off.

There matured a Wall to secure the innings, an artist to paint it in peerless patterns, a dada to stand up against the bullies of the world and a nuke from Najafgarh to blast opposition attacks to smithereens. Sachin evolved from the one who specialised in fighting losing battles, the engineer of ephemeral dreams, to the quintessential torchbearer who could plant the flag of the nation on the highest pinnacles. In boom time India, Sachin was that extra yard, that final frontier, that elusive peak which the Indian woke up to realise was within grasp. The country no longer followed the crumbs dropped along the way by the Hansel and Gretel of the west, it cut furrows where no other nation dared to tread. It was this boy who had grown into a man who taught the nation how to.  Taught them to live in the way he went about scoring runs.

Through his straight drive, one was taught the art of persuasion, the ball coaxed to the fence with the minimum of forceful negotiations. In his paddle sweep was the schoolboy who continued to live, finding cheeky non-existent gaps in patrolled confines to sneak out of the restricting oval into the forbidden boundary. In his upper cuts one came across real innovation, the new Indian who knew to take risks that amounted to audacious calculations. And his pull spoke of colossal confidence in self that defined the emerging superpower.

And now, 49 centuries and 14000 runs later, with almost double the figures if one considers the One Day Internationals, he still goes on and on. The dada has passed on into the shady confines of the IPL, cracks and crevices appear on the great Wall that for long sheltered the batting order and an work of inspired genius by the artist is often followed by days in recuperating recess. Passage of time has probably rounded those rough edges of excitement that used to accompany every foray into the middle. The fractional fraying of the hand eye coordination has probably curbed the audacity of the stroke-play, now passed on to the more than capable hands of Virender Sehwag. But, for each small diminution of the treasure-store of ability, there has been replenishing pearls and diamonds from the many splendored vaults of experience. Time's erosion has been replaced and secured with timeless foundation. Having shown the way to take on the world, he is now the wise general who knows the virtue of consolidation, of accumulation. He has never looked so invulnerable, so impregnable.

He is now the Bhishma Pitamaha of Indian cricket, who cannot retire until the last sling and arrow of fortune in the war for the world cup is shot. The one who has perfected his batting to resemble the benchmark of the Don in the last year, and yet has that last frontier to conquer.

While Sachin Tendulkar has without doubt been the crowning achievement of the sport of cricket and the rejuvenated nation of India, what follows in the wake of his gargantuan glory brings to light the ancient Upanishadic teaching – everything positive comes with its own inbuilt negative.
There are hordes of so called followers of cricket in our very nation who lift their hind quarters to pee their quaint peeves on the monumental achievements of the man. These consist of the self proclaimed defendants of the society who try to hide their irrational envy behind righteous indignation at a man making money for his phenomenal contributions, and the zonal yellow journalists, with a flair for statistical ignorance, who try to cut down each and every exploit of the remarkable cricketer with reasons and ratios that redefine ridiculous. A most pathological bunch of losers if there ever was any. If the master symbolises the height of Indian achievements in the past couple of decades, these callous critics probably underline all that is wrong with the nation, bringing alive the celebrated history of colonial divide and rule, the propensity to wallow in the muck of one's own making, of being satisfied with glorified mediocrity.

However, the collective contamination of these social stinkers can do little to tarnish the halo that has been the result of two decades of resplendent brilliance. 15000 runs, a 100 hundreds, a World Cup triumph? Whatever is the final goal, I await it with an amalgam of hope and trepidation. While nothing would be dearer to me than this giant of a little man to conquer whatever peak he sets sights on, summits the less of ability can hardly make out with the naked eye, a part of me dreads the day when he will make for the pavilion the last time. I have not known adult life without Sachin Tendulkar at the crease. Without the little man walking out at two drop for India, a whole generation of Indians will start walking alone.

From Grace to Don to Laxy - how Cricketers have Pushed through the Covers of Dictionary

It was a consulting presentation, on which I had spent considerable time, sprinkling it with image metaphors, quaint animations and gently persuasive arguments. Piloting it on a close friend, the only one whose review I respect sufficiently to make changes to my thought process, I was rewarded by a solitary word that confirmed that I had outdone myself. I knew then that it had been elegant  and enjoyable, subtle yet shining, effective yet aesthetic, while not sacrificing one ounce of substance. For closing his eyes and reflecting for a while, my best friend and severest critic had summed it up as "Laxy."

The greatness of a game is symbolised when coinages specifically meant for the sport extend beyond the outfield end up in the living room, to describe scenes of ordinary life far removed from the pitch. In a cricket crazy nation of Indians, who have rewoven a game of British heritage to the patterns of their own fabric of life, the sporting adjectives, verbs and nouns creep into the language of everyday, without any scope for ambiguity or misinterpretation.

A googly for ever remains an unpredictable step, the man of the moment ending up doing exactly the antithesis of the expected. Missing a dolly is the inability to capitalise on the obvious gift of fortune. And a faux pas that would make one the helpless target for the ribs of friends is in varied circles termed a full toss or a half volley or a loose ball.

This is not limited to the modern day proliferation of the television channels which beam sports non stop to integrate it within the realms of our disintegrating thoughtscape. Some words and expressions which have long established themselves in dignified dictionaries are of sporting origin. Long shot harks us back to the era of the knights when medieval tournaments and jousts were the sporting fare, with a target far away on which the William Tells focused their practised eyes with bows pulled taut. Bullseye is for sure a derivation from the sport of marksmanship, with arrows or muskets, while a huge, time consuming ordeal which taxes the physical and mental reserves is universally referred to as marathon.

While bouncer, beamer and bodyline have become as much a part of cricketing folklore as aggressive boardroom discussions, there is a chicken and egg problem to decipher whether the term caught napping is a contribution from the oval to the word book or the other way around.

However, what fascinates me is the way some of the names of the players get entrenched into the vocabulary beyond the game.

This is where Laxy ambles in -  a characteristic which is esoteric if one wants to build up the image with common words, but perfectly understandable to the cricket lover with the magic of the couple of syllables. In spite of its similarity in the tailing two letters and the rhyme with the provocative adjective, Laxy comes across as pure, sublime, effortless and heady. The greatness of an individual player is even more apparent when he enters the periphery of common parlance away from the game, when the exploits on the field leave a mark beyond the twenty two yards, imprinting them on the tapestry of everyday life, the very name evoking a definite characteristic which is unique and immediate in ready, revelling recognition.

Before the Hollywood influence and the rasping voice of Marlon Brando glamorised the Mafioso, in the cricketing nations Don meant God and not Godfather. W.G. Grace for ages was a symbol for the great, the pioneer, the ageless, the bushy beard or the potent and omnipotent. And the Compton look was the well groomed metropolis male, hair slicked back with Brylcream, not one strand out of place after a hard day's work.

To the middle class Indian of the seventies and eighties, drops of energy drained fighting for the basic necessities of life, Sunny was a flash of brightness in midst of dreary drudge.

With the advent of the post globalisation world of the nineties, Indians became world beaters in their own right. Team India followed suit, and so did the sporting influence on the vocabulary of the generation. Etched in my memory is the image of a friend preparing the defence of his dissertation. A group of us close chums sat through his exposition, and it was impressive enough for one of us to sum up the defence as Dravidian. The Wall had extended and cordoned off words well established in the dictionaries, driving his influence through the covers of the lexicon, giving an entire new spin to the interpretation. Dravidian no longer was limited in its meaning to the South Indian or the ancient Indian civilisation. It conjured up images of the impregnable, the infallible, without a chink in the armour for any shred of doubt to creep in, however tough be the questions posed, the problems faced, the foes opposed.

Likewise, dadagiri was given a facelift by Sourav Ganguly. Although this had to do more with the arrogance of gamesmanship than with the game, the haughty audacity of never cowing down in the face of the established and overbearing, erstwhile overlords, became the other meaning of a term that was for long considered derogatory.

However, from Grace to the Don, from Dravid to Dada, all were blessed to have a name or nick that could easily be tampered with and cloaked quickly into nouns or adjectives. Even Laxman benefitted from the aural proximity to the same semi sensational word that his name could be transformed into. But, what about some names that are proper enough to be as unyielding to manipulation as Sachin Tendulkar?

People have tried 10dulkar, Sachaninnings and general jovial juxtapositions, not really succeeding in stretching it into the dictionary by some quirk of prefix and suffix. However, they need not have bothered. Someone who goes on and on forever while lesser men may come and go, brooks no indulgence of monikers. His name is enough to summon images.

As the man himself has evolved, Sachin the name has conjured up meanings diverse through the two decades that he has spent in delighting the crowds. A young lad with naughty curls can fully expect to be called Sachin by friends and strangers alike, the name thus standing for an entire category of hair type. During the early days of the boy wonder, Sachin was synonymous with precocious talent, with child prodigy, with potential beyond age. As the years rolled on, it was used for unquestionable authority, someone who was beyond the orbit of the mortal, who can never be competed against – don't even try questioning his decision, he knows what he is talking about, he is a Sachin.

And now, it stands for an ever shining diamond, an ageless, timeless warrior, a jewel to be treasured, a trendsetter who has blazed along paths no one has walked before and continues to cut new furrows. It is the greatest epithet that can be bestowed on man.

In the end, the epic game is just like the Mahabharata or Shakespeare or the Iliad and Odyssey – where the names of characters define the characteristics, the situations and the dilemmas of day to day existence. Just as in the grand epics and dramas, there are the pinnacles of virtue as well as the murky, shady underbellies. For each saving Grace, there is a Trevor Chappel, denoting despicable, underhand dealings. For each Laxy brilliance there is a loose talking Lele, the new definition of turncoat.

However, it is the base that evokes appreciation of the ethereal. For all the Lalit Modis that symbolise filthy lucre, trying hard to rewrite a script that is fit for Homer, Shakespeare or Vyasa with grubby, money grabbing paws, there will always be a Don or a Sachin symbolising the everlasting quest for perfection.