Memories of "the" batsman

The first innings of Tendulkar's that I can recall watching fully is his match-winning knock of 62 in the game that marked South Africa's return to the international cricketing arena. I had followed his career pretty closely till then but hadn't had the chance to watch an innings played by him fully on TV. The timezone in Pakistan was too close to India meaning that his debut series clashed with school (one more reason to hate school ;-)). New Zealand and England timezone differences made it difficult, more so because at the age of 12 it was hard to have your way with parents when it came to sleeping/waking times. And for some reason (I can't recall why now, so I'll put it down to an early disdain for meaningless one-day cricket), I hadn't watched any of the ODIs India played in 1990. So it came about that this historic, much hyped match against Clive Rice and team was the first time I properly saw the little man bat. It was a difficult Eden Gardens pitch where Kapil Dev, Prabhakar, Srinath, and Raju had restricted the visitors to a moderate total. India quickly lost two wickets to the fiery Allan Donald (who I was hooked onto from that day on but that's a different tale) and the little man (or boy at 18) was in. He was easily the youngest across both teams and soon lost another senior partner in Sidhu to Donald but was completely unfazed. He combated everything Donald and co. threw at him with ease and a moved smoothly through the gears even shepherding the debutant Praveen Amre through a 56 run stand. We had a tiny (by current day standards) 20" television but to the eyes of a 13 yr old, Tendulkar's ability to find gaps and hit the ball was thrilling enough to make that screen appear twice as large. My brother lost his place as my teenage hero that day :-)

The Indian team then flew off to Australia for several months for a long Test series, an ODI triangular and the World Cup and though they performed dismally almost throughout, Tendulkar forged a name for himself and I was hooked further. My growing obsession with the game and a slightly better alignment of timezones meant that I got a chance to watch a lot of his 148* at Sydney, and his World Cup innings and thus started a chapter. For the next ten years (before I left the shores of India), I managed to watch Tendulkar bat at least for a bit in every Test match that he played for India and most ODIs as well. The two standout moments from a sensory perspective were my first two times watching a Test match live at the ground. One of the benefits of being a resident of Madras was that Tendulkar almost always played incredible knocks there (he averages 88.2 at Chepauk). The first time I was in Chepauk was in 1993 during England's horror tour as they wiped the floor 0-3. Unfortunately, as a school going boy, I had to wait for the weekend to go to the stadium by when Tendulkar and India had finished batting. It was still thrilling to be there and watch India's spin trio squeeze out the floundering Poms but it made me want to watch Tendulkar bat live even more. I had to wait five more years for that wish to come true when India played Mark Taylor's Australians. As the first match of the series, it was going to set the tone and so it was a bit of a shock when on day one Tendulkar hit one cracking boundary off Warne but then fell soon after edging a cut to slip. Now that I was in college, things were flipped around and the weekend was reserved for friends and fun and weekdays for skipping class and going to Chepauk. And this time I hit paydirt on the Monday as Tendulkar got in early at the fall of Sidhu's wicket and batted sublimely for almost the entire day taking the Aussie attack apart. India of course went on to win with their by then ritual spin squeeze. From 2001 (and that series) on, being away from India, most of my following of the game has been a combination of TV packages, live streaming, and more recently ESPNcricinfo. Its also meant that watching Tendulkar bat has been rarer than before making it more precious almost. Its been equally enjoyable though, especially watching how he's adapted his batting with age trading in audacity for solidity but never lowering performance levels. The strongest memories will probably be from the 2003 and 2011 World Cups and in terms of Test matches, the 2003-04 series against Australia, 2007 against England, 2007-08 against Australia, and the back to back series against South Africa in 2010.

Memories however wouldn't be complete without a top X of some sort so I'm going to chicken out here and go for a long list of top 5 each (Tests and ODIs). In no particular order then, here are the innings that will stick in my mind (I think) when I talk to bore my kids and grandkids with tales of the greatest batsmen I've had the pleasure of watching live.

Test matches

1. 116 vs. Australia, Melbourne 1999
2. 146 vs. South Africa, Cape Town 2011
3. 91 vs. England, Nottingham 2007
4. 155* vs. Australia, Chennai 1998
5. 92 vs. West Indies, Bridgetown 1997

ODIs

1. 117* vs. Australia, Sydney 2008
2. 98 vs. Pakistan, Centurion 2003
3. 65 vs. Sri Lanka, Kolkata 1996
4. 143 vs. Australia, Sharjah 1998
5. 175 vs. Australia, Hyderabad 2009

Its unlikely that these last two games against the West Indies list will supercede the innings in that first list, but it will certainly give me a few final memories of the pleasures of watching Tendulkar bat. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Here was a cricketing god, when comes such another"?