Chennai, then and now

Without doubt, this was the stuff most of our childhood dreams, and all sport-based movies, are made of — a seemingly insurmountable target at ridiculous odds and then, at the end of it all, tear-jerking success (if only he had made it to his century with a massive six over long-on, it would’ve been the perfect script).

But has this knock really made him a greater batsman than he already was? How much should these 103 runs add to a legend that has been built on 12,310 before them?

The circumstances under which this match was played — three weeks after the terror attack in Mumbai — lent themselves to drama as well, but really, was this innings any greater than the one he played at the same venue nine years ago? Did an inept Indian tail, that lost three wickets for four runs, take away from the 136 back-breakers Tendulkar had scored then?

Chasing 271 against Pakistan, he had walked in at six for two (more nervous, it’s fair to say, than 141 for two this time round). It soon became 50 for three, then 73 for four, then 82 for five. His back cramped up. Yet he battled on, for six and a half hours, nudging, pushing, hitting out. When he finally fell, India needed a measly 17 runs to win. Anil Kumble, Sunil Joshi and Javagal Srinath followed in the space of 21 nightmarish deliveries. And Tendulkar got slated.

England’s attack is far more balanced than the one the Australians brought here last month, but it doesn’t stand comparison to that Pakistan attack — Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis at their fiery best plus Saqlain Mushtaq with a doosra that still hadn’t been figured out.

Yet, that innings was brought up each time the Tendulkar vs Lara debate played out. Brian Charles Lara, the king of Trinidad, had conquered Barbados in 1999. Chasing 308 against the mighty Aussies, he stayed unbeaten on 153, stitching together 63 with the last two wickets, of which 12 runs came from the other end. History, and the romantic nature of the tale, wiped off Ian Healy’s glaring misses with last-man Courtney Walsh in.

What if Wasim Akram had floored that skier in Chennai? Must Healy dropping a catch, or Akram taking one, decide who the greater batsman was?

And let’s not fool ourselves by saying the greatness of this knock lay in the fact that Tendulkar was unbeaten, that he saw it through to the end.

India’s original great chase came back in 1976, against the West Indies in Trinidad, where they needed an unheard of 403 in the final innings. Two heroic knocks from that match are now part of cricketing folklore — Sunil Gavaskar’s 102 and Gundappa Vishwanath’s 112. Was either of them unbeaten at the end? How many talk of Brijesh Patel’s 49 not out that saw India through?

Is Tendulkar’s innings better than Gavaskar’s or Vishwanath’s just because one was unbeaten and the other two weren’t? If he had fallen, again, with 17 to get, would Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Amit Mishra and Ishant Sharma have thrown it away? Cricket may be a funny game, it’s not that funny. This team has, thankfully, moved far beyond the one-man army it tended to be in the ’90s.

But the fact is we have very little time for, or patience with, the tragic hero. Tendulkar would’ve known as much after the response to the 1999 disaster. The result itself was enough to give him nightmares; imagine what the country’s reaction did.

Memories would’ve come flooding back as he and Yuvraj Singh edged closer to the target. That final boundary would’ve helped slay many demons, but most were of our own making.

Tendulkar’s greatness lies in the manner in which he has reinvented himself over two decades, how he’s kept pace with a game that’s kept changing. No amount of technology has found a serious chink in his armour. There have been times when he has frustrated — nudging a short ball to fine-leg when once he would’ve disdainfully pulled it over mid-wicket. But there have been enough doses of magic to last a couple of lifetimes.

With this innings, he has ticked another box that will get counted in the final analysis — but the fact remains that this box would’ve been ticked long ago had he had the kind of support from his team mates that he did here.

To mark this out as the defining moment of a career that’s spanned 19 years might just be doing him some injustice.

deepak.narayanan@expressindia.com