When Sachin Tendulkar matched the Don…
That’s the tagline most Indian fans would like to read. (But they do not care that much really; they still love their heroes –with all his flaws and failings. Always the mark of a man whose ability outweighs his fallacy.) When Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz’s record, no one was even thinking of Bradman or of his extraordinary skills in the game. This was not to belittle Bradman. Rather he speaks volumes that few even think he can be surpassed. The fact of the matter remains that Sachin Tendulkar is one of the best players of the modern game and naturally gifted. But not even the best come close to surpassing the legendary late Sir Don Bradman.
It was a moment recorded in time – the day Sachin Tendulkar met Bradman on the latter’s ninety-first birthday. And it was also a record when Tendulkar equaled the legendary Australian hero’s most Test centuries tally of 29 in the West Indies in 2002. But the comparisons must be drawn there and left there. Both men belong to different times. One has become a legend of past folklore; the other, very close to being a living legend.
The only reason that Tendulkar can be called close to being a living legend is because he still has many miles to go. His talent demands it; though his body is increasingly beginning to suggest otherwise. If Bradman played till he was forty, Tendulkar needs to ensure his body holds up before he leaves his number unreachable as did Bradman.
Bradman scored his first Test century in his second Test; Tendulkar had to wait nine. But thereafter Tendulkar picked up the tempo though perhaps not in the same league as Bradman, a tough to emulate for even the best in the business.
The factor that has most gone against Tendulkar has been the fact that India have not won enough with him in the side. It is an argument that echoes incessantly, even in a team game where ten other players had a role to play in how history was made. But this is just one of the many burdens Tendulkar carries on his shoulders. Some reckon he cannot be taken in the same breath because Tendulkar has not managed to score a triple century in international cricket and Virender Sehwag has already done it twice. But by the same standards, Sehwag cannot be compared to a Bradman on the lone feat. That tells something of the lasting legacy that the great man from Australia left behind.
Bradman, on the other hand, has even Tendulkar in awe. The latter is known to have said that comparisons with Sir Don was not possible given the Australian’s awesome ability to score a century every third innings. Tendulkar has not done badly himself but that was what meeting a man whose heroics are told rather than seen, shared rather than experienced.
Tendulkar is the cynosure of all eyes and hence, perhaps the advent of television and live action through the world attract the global attention and subsequently, criticism. Brian Lara is considered a more swashbuckling batsmen, Tendulkar innovative. Yet in the context of the Bradman discussion, it would have been the icing on the cake even for a man making his own path like Sachin to be told that Bradman thought his technique was almost akin to his own.
The somewhat unfair criticisms are something that do not even spare Bradman. Cricket writers are sometimes too critical of scenarios that were simply not possible in Bradman’s day. There are views expressed on how Bradman would have coped with Twenty20 or of how his Test record would have languished had there been another opponent of worth other than England or that he would not have lasted to reach this average if he played the one day game as well.
It seems rather unfair to take a knife to the man who made cricket what it is at a time when all it gave was hope for a nation. His phenomenal statistics supersede any irrelevant conjectures about something that is simply not possible. He did face some of the faster bowlers of his time. His team went through the ups and downs and did face one of the most negatively devised tactics of Bodyline. Bradman was very much a mortal in that it was his deficiency in playing the shorter, rising delivery that was exploited by the then England captain, Douglas Jardine. Even then Bradman managed to average of fifty. The World War deprived him of eight years. His family life was not always a bliss but through it all, he still held grace and delivered. There were no extravagant endorsement cheques in his days and yet it did not matter to him. The purity of the game is also what makes it pristine. It is hard to imagine that any other player would take the field for the first time for his country purely on Bradman’s principles alone. They are perhaps thinking more on the lines of Tendulkar, not through the man’s faults, but with the dangling carrot of a world of financial opportunities that a cricket career brings in its wake these days.
Would the world want another Bradman? Perhaps not. After all his records, his legend has stood over sixty years since he hung up his boots. Sachin Tendulkar has been a phenomenon in his own right. Others have stretched him, like Ricky Ponting. Sachin Tendulkar will continue to be revered because he is a legend in his own right. As is Brian Lara. As perhaps will be Ponting when he hangs up his boots. It will be hard to find another Sachin Tendulkar. But teams will hope for one like him. But most people definitely know there will be none like Bradman. It has perhaps little to do with logic, though the statistics make for a good case. But like mention before, what is not seen but heard and enumerated seems to hold more magnetism than a hero whose game can be dissected even by those who can never play that way.
Sir Don Bradman is in a class of his own. To be subjected to comparisons takes away from him the immemorial, enduring image of the man who epitomized the game and its spirit. He continues to remain unsurpassed.
That’s the tagline most Indian fans would like to read. (But they do not care that much really; they still love their heroes –with all his flaws and failings. Always the mark of a man whose ability outweighs his fallacy.) When Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz’s record, no one was even thinking of Bradman or of his extraordinary skills in the game. This was not to belittle Bradman. Rather he speaks volumes that few even think he can be surpassed. The fact of the matter remains that Sachin Tendulkar is one of the best players of the modern game and naturally gifted. But not even the best come close to surpassing the legendary late Sir Don Bradman.
It was a moment recorded in time – the day Sachin Tendulkar met Bradman on the latter’s ninety-first birthday. And it was also a record when Tendulkar equaled the legendary Australian hero’s most Test centuries tally of 29 in the West Indies in 2002. But the comparisons must be drawn there and left there. Both men belong to different times. One has become a legend of past folklore; the other, very close to being a living legend.
The only reason that Tendulkar can be called close to being a living legend is because he still has many miles to go. His talent demands it; though his body is increasingly beginning to suggest otherwise. If Bradman played till he was forty, Tendulkar needs to ensure his body holds up before he leaves his number unreachable as did Bradman.
Bradman scored his first Test century in his second Test; Tendulkar had to wait nine. But thereafter Tendulkar picked up the tempo though perhaps not in the same league as Bradman, a tough to emulate for even the best in the business.
The factor that has most gone against Tendulkar has been the fact that India have not won enough with him in the side. It is an argument that echoes incessantly, even in a team game where ten other players had a role to play in how history was made. But this is just one of the many burdens Tendulkar carries on his shoulders. Some reckon he cannot be taken in the same breath because Tendulkar has not managed to score a triple century in international cricket and Virender Sehwag has already done it twice. But by the same standards, Sehwag cannot be compared to a Bradman on the lone feat. That tells something of the lasting legacy that the great man from Australia left behind.
Bradman, on the other hand, has even Tendulkar in awe. The latter is known to have said that comparisons with Sir Don was not possible given the Australian’s awesome ability to score a century every third innings. Tendulkar has not done badly himself but that was what meeting a man whose heroics are told rather than seen, shared rather than experienced.
Tendulkar is the cynosure of all eyes and hence, perhaps the advent of television and live action through the world attract the global attention and subsequently, criticism. Brian Lara is considered a more swashbuckling batsmen, Tendulkar innovative. Yet in the context of the Bradman discussion, it would have been the icing on the cake even for a man making his own path like Sachin to be told that Bradman thought his technique was almost akin to his own.
The somewhat unfair criticisms are something that do not even spare Bradman. Cricket writers are sometimes too critical of scenarios that were simply not possible in Bradman’s day. There are views expressed on how Bradman would have coped with Twenty20 or of how his Test record would have languished had there been another opponent of worth other than England or that he would not have lasted to reach this average if he played the one day game as well.
It seems rather unfair to take a knife to the man who made cricket what it is at a time when all it gave was hope for a nation. His phenomenal statistics supersede any irrelevant conjectures about something that is simply not possible. He did face some of the faster bowlers of his time. His team went through the ups and downs and did face one of the most negatively devised tactics of Bodyline. Bradman was very much a mortal in that it was his deficiency in playing the shorter, rising delivery that was exploited by the then England captain, Douglas Jardine. Even then Bradman managed to average of fifty. The World War deprived him of eight years. His family life was not always a bliss but through it all, he still held grace and delivered. There were no extravagant endorsement cheques in his days and yet it did not matter to him. The purity of the game is also what makes it pristine. It is hard to imagine that any other player would take the field for the first time for his country purely on Bradman’s principles alone. They are perhaps thinking more on the lines of Tendulkar, not through the man’s faults, but with the dangling carrot of a world of financial opportunities that a cricket career brings in its wake these days.
Would the world want another Bradman? Perhaps not. After all his records, his legend has stood over sixty years since he hung up his boots. Sachin Tendulkar has been a phenomenon in his own right. Others have stretched him, like Ricky Ponting. Sachin Tendulkar will continue to be revered because he is a legend in his own right. As is Brian Lara. As perhaps will be Ponting when he hangs up his boots. It will be hard to find another Sachin Tendulkar. But teams will hope for one like him. But most people definitely know there will be none like Bradman. It has perhaps little to do with logic, though the statistics make for a good case. But like mention before, what is not seen but heard and enumerated seems to hold more magnetism than a hero whose game can be dissected even by those who can never play that way.
Sir Don Bradman is in a class of his own. To be subjected to comparisons takes away from him the immemorial, enduring image of the man who epitomized the game and its spirit. He continues to remain unsurpassed.
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