A touch of class

    Ah,the world of ordinary men that you and I live in.But there is another world you know.A world that knows no full stops;where people create dreams because daily targets don't mean anything anymore;where excitement lies in shaking hands with your dreams.You can paint them with the most gorgeous colours,embellish them with the most lilting music.You can fly in them and you can meet the most beautiful people.Really,you can do anything because those dreams are yours and don't come with a wake-up call attached.They start with "once upon a time..." and end with "...lived happily ever after."
    I now know someone who dreams such beautiful dreams.And it seems all he has to do is cross the threshold into reality carrying them with him.As simple as that.Like he were...well,since ordinary people have ordinary metaphors...like he were crossing a road.
    On day 4 of the Chennai Test,Sachin Tendulkar played an innings that seemed,only on a couple of occasions, to belong to the real world.For the rest of the time it was sublime.It was like he was defining the length of the ball,its speed and its direction.And he was then batting against it.My son does that in his computer game when he wants to score a century.
    Tendulkar couldnt have chosen a more appropriate moment.The match hung in balance.The teams had been sparring at each other aware that a knockout blow was round the corner somewhere.
    My first reaction was to classify this innings as great.Then I remembered what someone had told me."You guys use the word 'great' like you get a bonus on it...a free shirt for every twenty greats...a tie for another five".So I tried several things.I thought of a few cricketing factors,some recent innings I've seen,I thought of other Tendulkar innings...but I couldnt think of another word.Forget it,I said....I'll say it often enough and pick up the shirt!
    You could see cricket all round the world,at stadiums and in television sets,and you will rarely see an innings as fulfilling as this.An innings that embraces so many dimensions that it blows the mind.

    It was a battle that was being fought as much on the turf of the Chidambaram stadium and in its horribly oppressive ambience as it was in the minds of two of the greatest cricketers of this century.Their skill,their toughness and the quality of their encounter earned them the right,if they hadnt already earned it,to think of them as players beyong their generation.
    It was 1-1 to them on this tour after Tendulkar's assault in Mumbai and Warne's beautiful comeback in the first innings at Chennai.But Tendulkar would have been aware as he walked out for the second time that Warne's test match conquest meant more than the Mumbai encounter.Tendulkar had to make it 1-1 in Chennai.
    He knew too that Warne had made him look just a bit silly three days earlier.he would have heard the wise pronouncements of Sunil Gavaskar saying "You dominate a bowler when you have scored a hundred and fifty against him.Not by hitting him for three boundaries because remember,he still has the ball in his hand.One mistake and you don't have the bat in hand."He knew too that by throwing caution to the winds,he had exposed his underbelly.Warne had provoked him and he had lost the battle of the mind.It wasn't just on the scoreboard that he had to win it back.
    There were other cricketing dimensions as well.India weren't out of trouble.They were just 44 ahead and had a tail that was longer then they would have liked it to be.And from thw way the redoubtable Ian Healy batted,they would need to have 100s in the bank even if Australia had to bat the last innings.Someone needed to play a substantial innings.That was the immediate need.But greatness lies in looking beyond and Tendulkar would have known that a long innings from him,if played quickly enough,could be a match winning one.From avoiding defeat,India would look at victory as a part of a side that hadn't won for 14 months,that would have been a welcome feeling.

    It was quite fascinating to see how Tendulkar ran between the wickets.On a winter morning with the temperature around 22º ,it would have been par for the course.On an early summer afternoon,in a concrete crucible that sapped you like a Venus fly-trap might its victim,it had a touch of madness to it.But run he did from his first run to his last,his own and his partner's,and in doing so,he told us how physically strong he was.It is an aspect of his cricket that isn't immediately obvious because it is shrouded behind so many other incandescent skills.But his legs didn't let up and on a ground where he was entitled to cramp,he produced one of the finest examples of running that I have seen.
    But those were human legs even if they were part of a dream innings.And so,when the first signs of weariness cropped up,and when Tendulkar found that the fielders along the boundary ropes might not be as easy to clear,he showed us why he is such a genius.The phase of his innings from 110 to 150 was just unreal as he began to glide the ball gently to third man.He knew that he had to conserve energy and so he pulled out the low-energy shots and played them with such breathtaking skill that they produced the same results as the energy sapping pulls or lofted drives.As Mark Taylor moved hid tird-man finer,Tendulkar pulled his blade another micro-inch and produced a little feather touch that took the ball wide of Healy and yet fine enough for third man.Ultimately Mark Taylor had to put in a slip and Tendulkar turned his attentions elsewhere.
    To me this was symbolic of a certain hunger for runs that seems,at last,to enter his inner circle of friends.There has always been a bully in him,a little streak of Viv Richards,that is now acquiring a veneer of Sunil Gavaskar.Was it the double hundred in Mumbai that induced this?Did it hurt that Brendon Kuruppu and Taslim Arif have achieved something in this game that he hasn't?Or did someone,a well-wisher obviously,whisper something in his ear about not having enough big scores?Whoever it was,or whatever it was,if the hunger can stay alive,he could end up being the greatest Indian to have played the game.

So,what would we remember the 155* by? The early assault on Gavin Robertson that saw 14 come from three fairly respectable balls? The mid-wicket heave of f  Shane Warne that Gavaskar thought was the defining moment of the match for the sheer confidence that accompanied it? The six off Greg Blewett that I suspect started off being one shot and ended up being another? Or was it that stunningly executed straight drive off Micheal Kasparowicz which Keith Stackpole called the greatest shot ever played that didnt get a run?
    If you are a cricket lover,you will realise that the excitement lies in contemplating the options,not in arriving at a result.
    Was this his most complete innings? Or was it the masterpiece at Perth that will remain emblazoned in my memory forever/A young man at 18,on the world's fastest track,hitting the square boundaries at the WACA from balls that his colleagues would have been proud to leave alone? Or was it that stunning exhibition of shot-making at Edbagston in the bitterly cold summer of 1996 when he played a bright and lusty tune amidst the faltering background score of the rest of the team? Or was it that afternoon in Capetown when the clockmakers of Geneva would have gladly allowed time to stand still,while he and Mohammad Azharuddin unfurled the riches of another civilisation?

Only he will know.But gee,I hope he makes the choice more difficult with every passing day.