Let's see Sachin with a new eye

The entertainer has become an accumulator but Sachin Tendulkar still retains an aura about him © AFP

In 1992, after Sachin Tendulkar had followed up his stunning first-innings hundred at Perth with an airy-fairy dismissal in the second, Allan Border, the hard-nosed captain of Australia and a grizzled veteran of 130 Tests, came to his defence with words to this effect: "He is only 18. I am 37 and even I lose my head once in a while."

It has never been easy to equate Tendulkar's cricket with his age. Such was his brilliance in 1992 that it was easy to forget that he was only 18 then. Now, when he is 31, we marvel at the achievements of a man so young, and speculate about the number of years he has still left, often overlooking his cricket age.

Tendulkar has now played more than 15 years of international cricket, that's a little more than Border's entire career. Sunil Gavaskar played for 16, and Viv Richards for 17. He has played his cricket in 14 countries and 95 grounds and scored more runs and more hundreds than anyone else in the history of the international game. Yet, we refuse him the allowance of ageing, of maturing, of slowing down. He has moved, as he must. But we are stuck with the idea of his carefree youth.

We continue to expect the fizz and abandon of someone of 19 from a 31-year-old man with a wife and two children. We refuse to acknowledge that the body can slow down, that the mind can become weary and mindful of pitfalls. Quite simply, we just can't bear the thought of our Sachin growing old. In our desperation to cling on to his past, we have made it difficult for ourselves to accept the reality of his present. Look at him, we sigh, our entertainer has become an accumulator.

Viv Richards, we never tire of pointing out, never changed his ways. His reflexes might have slowed down, but the rage never left him; he came out smouldering and either blazed away or perished. Yet we ignore the fact that his last three years fetched Richards only 978 runs from 19 Tests, at 36.22, with only one century. Richards was too proud a man to defend, but he was a lesser player for it during his last years.

It is for everyone to see that Tendulkar's game has changed. He is more than willing to admit it himself. If it hadn't, he says illuminatingly, it would have meant that oppositions haven't been using their brains. Bowlers have switched to play the waiting game with him, and he has responded in kind. He has been sensitive to the changes in his body too, and though he wouldn't pinpoint what exactly has changed, he would say this much: "The body will slow down, the question is how much time it takes and how you adjust to the change."

It is now up to the rest of the world, particularly his passionate fans in India, to accept those changes. Ten years, or even five years, ago, he looked to get his hundred with a flourish, these days he looks to do it with a nudge. Depending on how you look at it, it is either conservatism or conservationism. Earlier, Tendulkar was prone to throw his wicket away in his fifties and early hundreds. These days, once he gets his eye in, he is almost impossible to remove. His figures this year are revealing. He has seven single-digit scores in 14 innings, yet he has scored 879 runs and is poised to end the year with the highest annual average of his 15-year career - it currently stands at 97.66. He has been dismissed only once after scoring a fifty, and his smallest hundred this year has been 194 not out.

His batting this year is perhaps indicative of a high level of self-awareness and a graceful acceptance that bowlers all over the world might have found a chink or two. Tendulkar has the keenest of cricket minds, and more than ever before he is alive to the need to make the good days count, because they might not come as frequently as they did before.

Statistically, the previous year was his worst in Tests. He scored only 153 runs from five Tests at 17. He failed in five successive innings in Australia, before turning it around in the first Test of this year with an astounding double-hundred at Sydney, where he denied himself the option of scoring between mid-off and point. It wasn't as breathtaking as his earlier century at the SCG, a magnificent unbeaten 148 that Richie Benaud was moved to describe as the finest he had watched on Australian soil, but it was a triumph in conception and execution.

In his latest book, Peter Roebuck says that the new Tendulkar was launched in Sydney. He goes on to write: "No regrets should be held about Tendulkar acknowledging the passing of time and becoming a robust, rather than a dazzling, batsman. He must be allowed to grow. Watching him bat may not be as exciting, but it will be enormously satisfying. Those who love their cricket will be given the opportunity of watching a master at work."

To end it with a Roebuckism, nothing more needs to be said.

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Sambit Bal is the editor of Cricinfo in India and of Wisden Asia Cricket magazine.