Tuesday, May 14, 2002

Just when it was all getting so wretchedly predictable, suddenly the unthinkable happens. Just when you couldn't stand the thought of yet another Test, suddenly you can't wait for the next one. Just when you thought you'd never stop weeping, suddenly you can't stop laughing. It's the greatest game on Earth. It's cricket. And it's exciting again.

For that, we can thank one man. Sachin Tendulkar, in his last four Test innings, has been dismissed for 0, 0, 8 and 0.

He is not simply in the middle of an ordinary trot. He is flailing, flunking, flopping hopelessly. He is not doing it in a couple of meaningless one-dayers. He has chosen the most crucial stage of a gripping Test series. And he has not been felled by a deadly attack working to a devious plan. Mervyn Dillon, Cameron Cuffy, Pedro Collins and Adam Sanford would normally have trouble starting a car, let alone a batting collapse.

Make no mistake: cricket was in the doldrums a week ago. Australia looked as boringly unassailable as ever. A bomb blast had shaken Karachi, sending the Kiwis home early and ensuring there is as much chance of the Australians touring Pakistan as there is of Jeff Thomson confessing he was a medium-pacer who used to get a bit of help from the wind. Then, just when things could get no worse, they got worse. England brought back John Crawley.

Thanks to Sachin, none of these mini-crises seem to matter. He has reminded us of cricket's extraordinary capacity to renew itself in the face of disaster. He has also reminded us, by batting like any hapless club rabbit, of the game's fundamental premise: that a batsman is always one ball away from getting out and raining potential disaster down upon his team. Call it the enigma of cricket, if you like, but somehow the word does not do the game justice.

No other sport has it to the same degree. Tiger Woods might come second occasionally but he does not miss four cuts in a row. David Beckham is no more likely to go four games without a kick than he is to go four days without a manicure.

In cricket, however, the only certainty is uncertainty. It is the most tantalising of sporting nuances, heightened by the fact that whatever happens is often entirely out of the batsman's control. A ball can keep low. An umpire can blunder. A fielder can snare a screamer. Your partner can run you out. Perversely, one or all of the above are most likely to happen when a batsman is at his lowest ebb. Ask Sachin.

Now, before our Indian readers start sharpening their arrows - or shuffling their mouses towards their back arrows - it is worth stating that Wisden are among Sachin's biggest fans. Runs and records, after all, are the two Rs that keep us in business. When Sachin's happy, we're happy.

But it is a weakness of the human condition: the one thing more satisfying than seeing the world's best batsman blast a brilliant century is seeing the world's best batsman look like a goose. Don Bradman's mightiest knock in adversity was probably his reckless 103 not out in the second innings of his comeback Test in the Bodyline series. But you can bet the atmosphere was nothing compared with the silence that engulfed the MCG two days earlier when Bradman tried to hook the first ball of his first innings - a Bill Bowes half-tracker that pitched outside off - and was bowled for a golden duck.

Which brings us to another of the lessons we have been reminded of by Sachin's rations. Nobody, nowhere, no way will ever match The Don. In the weeks and months since Bradman's death there have been murmurings that he made his runs on flat tracks against fielding sides who deemed chasing after the ball to be poor etiquette. It has even been suggested that Sachin, had he been around in the 1930s, might have averaged in the low nineties himself.

Now we know different. Now we know that Sachin is vulnerable to the same forces of nature that have laughed at anyone who has ever picked up a cricket bat. Except Bradman.

The enormity of Sachin's humiliation cannot be underestimated. He has been dismissed five times in the last 25 balls he has faced. He has made four single-digit scores in a row. Allan Border, in the course of 265 Test innings, never sunk that low. Nor has Steve Waugh. Nor did Mark Taylor, David Boon, Greg Chappell (whose form was once so hopeless that he became known as Chappello), Ian Chappell, Bob Simpson, Neil Harvey, Arthur Morris, Stan McCabe, Bill Ponsford or Clem Hill. Bill Lawry, in 67 Tests, never even made three single-figure scores in a row.

As for Bradman, his worst streak across four innings occurred when Australia went 2-0 down in the 1936-37 Ashes series: 0, 0, 82 and 13. Needless to say, Australia bounced back to win 3-2 and Bradman's next dozen Test tallies read 270, 26, 212, 169, 51, 144*, 18, 102*, 103, 16, 187, 234. That's 1532 runs at an average of 153.20.

It gives Tendulkar something to strive for, at least, although it is hard to imagine him pulling off something similar. He's a handy batsman, sure. But at the end of the day he is just another batsman, one who is not as graceful as Chappell, as gifted as McCabe, as brilliant as Trumper, as unquenchable as Ponsford, or as solid in a crisis as Border or Waugh. And certainly not as steady, not as unshakeable, as Bradman must have been.

Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Watching Bradman bat must have felt like watching your favourite rock band return to the stage for a fourth encore: too much of a good thing. Anyway, consider Tendulkar's claims to Bradmanliness to be officially dead in the water. And consider cricket to be alive once more.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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