It took Sachin Tendulkar 29 Test matches, and a little over four years, to nudge his average over the 50 mark. It would hover around that figure – generally accepted as the cut-off between the great and the very good – for the next four seasons. By the time Australia came to India in 1998, Tendulkar was averaging 51.97 from 58 Test matches. His record since that watershed series, when he took on and dismantled Shane Warne, is simply frightening. In 31 Tests, he has compiled 3313 runs at a scarcely believable average of 67.61. He's also stockpiled 13 hundreds and 12 fifties, meaning that he's more or less guaranteed a fifty each time he turns up for a Test match. Unless your name is Don Bradman, those are pretty special figures.

Those statistics don't include the unbeaten 137 he made today against an innocuous Zimbabwe attack. But there's always been more to the Tendulkar phenomenon than mere numbers. It's his ability to take on and destroy the best that has marked him out as the finest of his generation. Against South Africa a couple of months ago, he scripted a memorable 155 against Shaun Pollock and his lieutenants, repeatedly slashing the ball over slips and through third man to circumvent South Africa's outside-off-stump line. It was genius at work, and Pollock had no answers.

He did much the same as an 18-year old at Perth in 1991, treating Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes and Mike Whitney with scant respect on his way to a glorious 114. He never made the Himalayan scores that Lara did, but the poise and confidence with which he made his runs and demoralised bowlers marked him out as a rare talent.

Over the last couple of seasons though, his batting has changed. Statistically, he's gone from strength to strength. But as far as providing entertainment and theatre goes, some would say he's taken a step backward. The 1996-vintage Tendulkar seldom hung around, and he rarely ground the weaker attacks into the ground. But since that first double-hundred against New Zealand in 1999, he's been a man transformed. The poise, confidence and thrilling strokeplay are still in evidence, but they've been joined by a new element – restraint. Tendulkar Mark II, the one we saw in action today, is willing to bide his time. He waits for his openings, the way a chess grandmaster or a cheetah on the prowl does.

There was no unseemly rush today, no hell-for-leather strokeplay. Like a good Halal butcher, he bled Zimbabwe dry, slowly but very surely. When the loose balls came along, he gave them the royal flourish. One magnificent straight-drive scorched turf on its way to the sightscreen, and there were some majestic fetches to leg from outside off stump. But through it all ran the common thread of restraint. You got the feeling that if he had just let himself go, he could have sprayed the bowlers around like a kid with a water pistol.

There's a school of thought that suggests he's less easy on the eye these days. Others say that it's only right that he tries to tap as much as he can from the vast reservoir of talent at his disposal. Ultimately, it depends on your point of view. After doing his share of commercial potboilers, Tendulkar these days seems focussed on the batting Oscars. And they don't usually give those out for style without substance.

Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

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