A numbers game

Test cricket has always carried a special allure for that subset of enthusiasts who like to put together a narrative only with numbers. For them,the match at Lord’s has a lot of raw material. It is,of course,the 2,000th Test match of all time,it is India and England’s 100th encounter,and in the London ground that has offered limited purchase to Sachin Tendulkar,Rahul Dravid and V.V.S. Laxman (Tendulkar has struggled to even notch a half-century),it sets up many possibilities. And with England desirous of wresting the No 1 Test ranking from India,a decisive victory in the four-Test home series could swing it.

The focus,predictably,is on Tendulkar. He is on the brink of what would be his 100th hundred — he is already in possession of 51 Test and 48 one-day centuries. Between them,Dravid,Tendulkar and Laxman have 99 centuries,so a century from any one of them could set up a collective milestone for a trio that have given spine to India’s batting line-up for more than a decade. And with Tendulkar just 308 runs short of the 15,000 Test runs mark,we can only try to imagine what the shape of his record will eventually be.

And for anyone who frets about the viability of Test cricket,here is a number check on Tendulkar’s watch. When he debuted,while still a schoolboy,in Karachi in November 1989,that was the 1,127th Test match to be played. By then,cricket was well enough engulfed with worries that the runaway popularity of one-day cricket would smother the five-day version of the game. Yet,the past two decades have been the golden age of Tests,and not just in terms of the number of matches played — if only we stop fretting,we’d see that.