Continuing to miss Sachin Tendulkar

Considering he’s been the highest profile player for pretty much the whole time we’ve been following cricket, we’ve missed an awful lot of Sachin Tendulkar’s career.

We went to the match in which he scored his first Test century, but we didn’t see him bat. Then, for a long time afterwards, his innings were broadcast elsewhere and we’d only check in with him once every few years when there was a World Cup or India toured England. Each time this happened, we’d wonder how the hell he managed to average over 50 – not because we didn’t think he was good, but because back then that sort of average meant something.

In more recent years, we’ve seen more of him, but that isn’t to say we’ve always watched closely. Sachin Tendulkar is so massive, such a fixture in cricket, that it never felt vital to watch any particular innings. There would always be another.

Highlights

He’s never been one for the Brian Lara innings anyway. Not for him extraordinary peaks and troughs. For a man who’s hit more boundaries than anyone, his career is actually defined by accumulation. He’s had dryish spells, certainly, but he’s been playing international cricket for 25 years – that’ll happen. In general, he’s picked up a mid-sized hundred every few innings, regardless of age, opposition or location.

We’ve written before about how Tendulkar’s career is just too much to take in and evaluate. This is the true mark of his genius; that we can have missed the vast majority of his 780 international innings and still be overwhelmed by the information. You can’t boil it all down to a jus and taste it. It is something which can only possibly be consumed over many sittings.

Summing him up

Some career obituaries you read will point to something in particular as summing him up – a particular shot or a particular innings. No. That is entirely missing the point. The point is the sheer breadth of what he’s achieved.

Hardly anyone has been Test standard at 16. Hardly anyone has been Test standard at 40. Tendulkar has been both and more. Between those two already freakish extremes, lies the most freakish achievement of all. He’s excelled at all forms of batting near-constantly against a backdrop of insane expectation.

There are almost infinite scenarios in cricket. Different goals, different formats, different pitches, different bowlers, different fields, different circumstances. You can always find something that needs ticking off, but by any rational measure, Tendulkar has done the job.

This was why we once said that he has been better than Bradman. It was mischievous because we didn’t really mean it as a comparison. It’s just that there’s a temptation to flatter players from the past when imagining what they did or what they would have done had they been around today, whereas Sachin Tendulkar can’t really benefit from this. He’s a known quantity. In 25 years and three formats, he’s come up against a wider variety of challenges than anyone. Mostly, he’s done okay.

Darren Sammy’s surely on the way out, right?

We’ve got a Sachin Tendulkar post saved as a draft, but let’s look elsewhere today. Let’s look at the West Indies captain, Darren Sammy, who’s currently having a ‘mare.

We rather like Sammy. Not just because his initials make him DJ Sammy, not just because he purveys genuine medium-pace and not just because he’s forever so ready to smile you wonder whether he’s overmedicated. We also happen to think that he’s a reasonably decent cricketer.

He’s not a match-winning bowler and he’s not a batsman you’d expect more than 50 from, but he’s more than capable of bowling tight overs and hitting handy runs down the order. The problem is that this is pretty much all you can expect from him, so when he’s out of form, there aren’t many great memories to refer to when making a case for his retention.

In the Windies, many people have been baying for him to be dropped ever since he was made captain. We see their point, but at the same time the team’s often been unstable enough that a decent captain would be worth his place even if all he could do were field. It’s not like Sammy’s keeping a Michael Holding out of the side, after all.

But whoever he’s keeping out of the side may just get a game when the Windies play their next Test. Having been given the boot from the one-day captaincy, Sammy’s been under increasing pressure in the longest format. He says he thrives on criticism, which should mean he’s at his best right now.

He is not at his best.

In the first Test, he admitted leading by example by playing a stupid, impatient, entirely inappropriate shot. He said he had to learn. In the first innings of this Test, he gloved the first delivery he faced, concluded that he now had his eye in and absolutely skied the second. Then, when India came to bat, in a classic case of trying to claw yourself back into credit through an ill-judged attempt to ‘take responsibility’ he opened the bowling and was promptly spanked.

Darren Sammy’s job is to play second fiddle. In attempting to play the lead violin part, he’s making himself redundant in more ways than one.

We haven’t written about Sachin Tendulkar

We’ve instead written about writing about Sachin Tendulkar over at Cricinfo.

Within minutes of it being published, it had already attracted insightful comment:

“Now finally great person retirement time will came But We expecting good support for younger with their experience. This Type of great person very low volume coming.”

Translation software may well have been put to use there. Translation software is gash.

England’s two seam bowlers

The fight to be England’s third seamer is not a classic. It is a pillow fight, at best.

In the warm-up matches, Chris Tremlett has taken one wicket in 37 overs; Boyd Rankin has three wickets from 49 overs; while Steven Finn tops the wicket tally with five wickets in 55 overs. Finn also has the best average of the three, at 51, despite conceding 4.63 runs an over.

You might think: ‘warm-up matches, schwarm-up matches,’ but this does make a mockery of all that talk about competition for places. If there’s competition here, it’s in the style of Go For Broke where the players are competing to achieve the exact opposite of what you might expect.

At present, the choice seems to be between Boyd Rankin’s ineffectiveness and the occasional wicket from the run-haemorrhaging Steven Finn. We’d go for Monty Panesar. Or we’d play Jonathan Trott as an all-rounder. You can’t beat a bit of slapped-back dobble.

Mitchell Johnson’s back

As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Although that would go some way towards explaining why he’s forever spearing balls down the leg side.

We find ourself conflicted about Johnson’s recall. He has looked like a proper fast bowler of late, which is a good thing. However, we don’t particularly want England to face a proper fast bowler. We’d far rather they faced the Johnson of old – a loping bag of meat hanging from a bad haircut with all the coordination of a puppet. That would mean denying the world a fast bowler though and there aren’t many of those knocking about these days.

George Bailey looks set to play in the first Test as well. His one-day form is magic. His first-class record is middling. It will be interesting to see whether there is some monumental flaw in his batting which might be exploited or whether his grown-up brain will get him through.

The food eaten by the England cricket team

We’ve just been in Belgium. Our diet’s been very diverse, incorporating all sorts of beers, all sorts of cheeses and both mayonnaise and spiced mayonnaise. We like to think we know what we’re talking about when it comes to sports nutrition and we can therefore confirm that the revelations about the England cricket team’s dietary stipulations are slightly irritating.

Why? Modern Australia’s pretentious eating habits can no longer be ridiculed because the England cricket team have matched them quinoa for quinoa. You can’t very well mock Australians’ love of tofu and mung beans when your sporting representatives are knocking back the agave nectar. A joke has been stolen. There is no greater crime that that. (There absolutely is – don’t use this as part of your defence if you’re being tried for war crimes.)

The other major irritation arising from this almost certainly Ashes-winning menu is that it’s basically given a load of publicity to a certain manufacturer of protein supplements. We’ve nothing against the brand in question. Its just that this legitimises having an official supplier and repeatedly using their brand name where an ordinary word will do as if no alternative exists. We didn’t try and make out that we’d only been drinking De Halve Maan Straffe Hendrik for the past four days, did we? No – our blurred vision takes in broader horizons.

Wedding match report

Dandy Dan writes:

The day started well. I got married.

Once that was out of the way, the serious matters of the day came into view. I’ve been to a fair few weddings over the years and in most, I’ve found there to be a ‘lull’ at some point. Eager for this not to affect my own wedding, I asked The So Called Will to borrow a Kwik-Cricket set from his school and to organise a game.

The rules were established. Each batsman had one over to score as many runs as possible. Five runs would be deducted for each loss of wicket. Being the Groom, I went first.

Things started well. Will was bowling to me in a repetition of school holidays circa 1987-1995. A loose, short one outside off stump allowed me to execute a glorious back foot cut over Price’s head for four.

The next ball was flicked off my hips for an agreed two. A drive through mid-on brought four. Will was not enjoying this trip down memory lane. He focused on line and length. The right thing to do, but against a batsman in this sort of form, pointless. He was dispatched for a disputed six over his head.

Another cut brought a further four with a solid block ending the over. The block was slightly exaggerated just to prove the point that I could do it. 20 runs off the over. I was pleased with that.

Will and I swapped places. I opened with some off spin. This immediately brought turn AND bounce. First two balls went straight through the gate but narrowly missed the stumps. The third brought an LBW appeal. Will insisted it was going down leg-side. Knowing there was no way he could now overtake my score (and in the interests of keeping the spirit of the day friendly) I agreed. Not wanting to show off, I finished the over with some medium-fast.

Others came and tried to better my score, but fittingly no one managed to. My new cousin Kieran (age eight) enjoyed fetching the ball for the ‘grown-ups’. This was the first time I’ve ever found a use for a child at a wedding.

My Australian friend Kai (who had come all the way from Sydney for the event) did a pretty good job at being an Australian cricketer. He was rubbish. Mark J adopted the unusual fielding technique of biting on the plastic pint glass so he had two hands free for a catch. By doing this he had impressively kept both priorities at the top of his agenda.

Tanya got involved by first bravely adopting a position at silly mid-off and then later picking up the bat to face some of Gareth’s slow-medium. Ben showed disappointing form with the ball it has to be said. Didn’t see Price’s innings alas, but I know he didn’t score as many as me. My best man Rob was reasonably destructive with the plastic, although at one point he did hit my nephew’s girlfriend with a wild pull. The ball fired straight into the side of her rib-cage. She didn’t flinch. Good girl.

Inevitably, rain stopped play. However, we had to get on and have a first dance anyway so it all worked out well in the end.

Mandy being conspicuously indifferent to King Cricket

Ed writes:

Please find attached a picture that seems to tick all the boxes. Found it while going through some old pictures yesterday.

The kitten was called Mandy and is sadly no longer with us.

We worry for Alastair Cook’s skin

He never goes indoors when he’s Down Under. He just stays out on the pitch, day after day, in direct sunlight. We know he’s got sunblock on and everything, but what if he misses a bit. Actually, that’s ridiculous – in Australia, Cook never misses.

Arriving with little form and a bad back, Cook’s gone and batted all day for 154 not out in the first match he’s played. In time-honoured tradition, he’s dragged someone along with him as well. Mike Carberry is on 153 not out and with an unusual amount of uncertainty surrounding the batting line-up, might just play in the first Test.

Would this be so bad? Not really. Carberry’s got a certain wisened heft about his batting and Joe Root’s tyres have been partially deflated by the odd pothole encountered as an opener. Root shouldn’t grumble about being sent back to the smooth tarmac of number six and it’s high time England fielded a part-time electrician (Carberry).

Faf du Plessis – incompetent but not immoral

We can thank Faf du Plessis for inadvertently giving us the fantastically earnest Cricinfo headline: ‘No zips on cricket kit by 2015′. This brave new world is to be created because he was caught raking the ball across a zip on his kecks, presumably in a bid to rough it up.

Well aware that cricket treats ball tamperers like war criminals, Faf has gone to the trouble of making some vague comments about the matter.

His first line of defence is:

“When the on-field umpires inspected the ball, there wasn’t a scratch mark or anything untoward on the ball. In fact, it was in excellent shape and wasn’t reverse-swinging at all. Basically, the condition of the ball hadn’t been changed, and that’s why I think my penalty was not as harsh as the sentences given out for other similar incidents.”

This says to us that he wasn’t doing his job very well. He is an incompetent ball scratcher – which can also double as an insult.

His second line of defence is:

“I pride myself on being a morally good person, and that’s why this past week has been so difficult, as people have been quick to label me a cheat.”

The thing about morals is that they are internally generated. It’s an individual thing. You can do something you consider morally wrong without breaking the law, but in different circumstances you can also break the law without feeling like you have morally transgressed.

As far as cricket as a whole is concerned, we suggest that the unwritten code is that ball tampering only becomes morally wrong at the point at which you are caught.