When numbers come to haunt a nation

An excerpt from the poem ‘Some Like Poetry’ by Wislawa Szymborska reads:

“History counts its skeletons in round numbers.

A thousand and one remains a thousand,

As though the one had never existed:

An imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,

An ABC never read…”

he Polish poet’s verses are flummoxing but true. The nuptial knot of man and numbers was tied under coercion and man — with his inability to decimate tears and laughter to decimals — has turned the relationship toward constant disharmony.

In life, while numbers might forget a serial killing, stating the murderer was also killed; for human beings, the quantifying of emotions is a heartless betrayal.

On a lesser platform like cricket, while a man might discount the overall record of his favourite team by pointing out moments of bare-chested ebullience and enormity of victories in scatter; numbers refuse to make valid such human foibles.

At the time of my writing this column, India has lost a Test match again. Its fifth straight defeat on foreign shores. The last time, after a humiliating 4-0 whitewash in England when I pointed out the existence of the ailment, many refuted my argument. All the counter-arguments would end with marks of exclamation. “We are the World Champions, don’t forget!” But that was won in our own backyard, don’t forget.
It is true that India, post–Azhar era, has performed beyond reputation. We have won many trophies which we would have otherwise donated, converted possible draws to victory and losses to draws. Yet to be considered the best Test team (we were no.1 in ICC Test ranking before the drubbing in England) we haven’t done enough.

Under Dhoni we have won two major tournaments, the ICC World Cup in 2011 and T20 World Cup in 2007, but have failed to perform in semblance in the longer version of the game, away from home.

Those in know, know that Dhoni holds the record of four Test victories in his first four matches as captain, but seldom do we sit back to figure out that all of them were played in India.

Outside the cocoon of sub-continental pitches, Dhoni’s record as captain like all his predecessors has been dismal and skewed. After MSD took over in 2008, in the 17 matches played abroad, we have won 5, drawn 5 and lost 7. Further play with numbers reveal that out of the 5 wins, one each has come against Bangladesh, West Indies and New Zealand, and one was won against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. So, barring a victory in South Africa last year, there’s not much we have brought home.

The supporters of Dhoni might argue that the situation was no better before his ascend to the throne. If they do, they would be statistically correct. Since 2000, when Sourav Ganguly took over, India has appeared in 72 Test matches overseas, winning only 24 of them while they lost 26 and drew 22.

Abysmal, if statistically measured. But post the match-fixing fiasco we hardly gave a damn, and before that we hardly won many. We never associated Ganguly with stats. We could not have. If we close our eyes and try to sketch him in our imagination, the first image would be of Dada flailing his shirt from the Lord’s balcony after defeating England in the Natwest Series. Dada after the victory against Australia at home and Dada at the presentation ceremony after a series draw in Australia come second and third to me.

Since 2000, India has appeared in 72 Test matches overseas, winning only 24 of them while they lost 26 and drew 22.

His role in Indian cricket was that of a sculptor, he was not to see through the exhibitions. When Kumble says, “Ganguly taught us to win abroad” he is not talking about series sweeping victories. But the self-respect and grit that the team derived from Ganguly was his contribution. Even a draw and a single victory meant a lot. He had sewn the frays to fabric, but the onus was on the next generation to build from the plinth.

Ironically, from the Ganguly-built Team India only Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag and V.V.S Laxman are part of the ongoing series against Australia. While Kaif dissolved into oblivion, Yuvraj could never graduate to become a Test match player and Harbhajan’s career now appears in doldrums.

More disconcerting has been India’s batting which still seems to heavily depend on the remaining three of the fab four. In the Test matches played this season, the top three positions in the run-scorers table are occupied by Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar. The resurgent ‘Wall’ tops the table with 1,145 runs overall and 826 runs on foreign pitches, Laxman follows with 773 runs in all and 475 abroad, and Tendulkar has accumulated 756 runs with 538 scored outside India.

The number six position in the Indian batting order has been up for grabs since Ganguly’s retirement. India has tried out Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh at different times. Raina became an amusing joke, Yuvraj has been ever-struggling and Kohli is yet to prove his worth in Test matches. At number seven, Dhoni who would have been expected to lead from front has produced 511 runs at an average of just over 26 this year which further goes down to 23 overseas.

Geoffrey Boycott’s comment, “My mom plays the rising ball better than Raina” was received with furore all over India. However blatant, it is a fact that even the new generation is prone to the same old problem of developing cold feet when faced with fast bowlers.

Our bowling without Zaheer Khan was laid naked in England. Ishant Sharma has been good but was found hungry for support. With Umesh Yadav’s seven wicket haul in this match, pace department surprisingly seems the most synchronised. The duo of Ashwin and Ojha has shown glimpses yet Jumbo’s boots are too big to fit into.

But this all I write because we have lost five on a trot. The numbers now look to have an upper-hand in the house of the couple. Yet such moments of epiphanies have come and gone. Following the usual routine, life will get back to normal. A drawn series here or a victory in the One-dayers will evaporate all these figures and transport us back to emotions’ embrace.

Written for Sportskeeda

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Turnbuckle: It took a Patil to pet the Aussies

Sandeep Patil hit back with vengeance

It was the beginning of 1981. India had lost the first Test of their series against Australia by an innings and 4 runs. Greg Chappell, in his very first outing against India had scored a monumental 204. The visitors were bowled out for identical scores of 201 in both innings, their 11 batsmen batting twice failed to eclipse that one individual score.

Yet it wasn’t this shameful in those days. No one took us seriously nor did we take ourselves; a draw was synonymous to a victory and a loss (not an innings defeat) felt almost like a draw.

In a batting line-up which trembled like a pack of cards, only one man provided some resistance. And he was no Gavaskar, Kapil Dev or Vishwanath, but a series old Sandeep Patil who stroked a handsome 65 off 78 balls before falling prey to a Len Pascoe bouncer — he had to retire hurt.

Wisden noted in its almanack: “… Patil, who drove with great power against anything overpitched until his vulnerability to the short-pitched ball got him into trouble”

Over the next 18 days (yes, you may laugh over the slow and languid tours), India had rejuvenated themselves. At least it seemed so from the body language of a few players.

For the second match at Adelaide Oval, Australians were put in to bat and they posted an even larger total of 528, courtesy Kim Hughes’s 213 and Graeme Wood’s 125. India started steadily with captain Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan adding 77 runs for the 1st wicket, before the former lost his stumps to Pascoe. While Chauhan continued playing his natural game, the players on the other end were leaving like travellers. Night-watchman Shivlal Yadav could manage only 16 runs, Vishwanath and Vengsarkar couldn’t even reach double figures. From 77/1, India were down to 130/4. Patil, bludgeoned in his last outing, was the next man to step in.

“I detected a growing tendency among the patriotic Australians at the ground to brand the pitch so docile that the three pacemen who have slashed their way through all opposition at will, were bowling under hopelessly unfavourable conditions.” - Bill O' Reilly 

We, Indians are superstitious: a sneeze here, a passing cat there can often deter a well-planned journey. So, to say that Patil’s start was inauspicious would not be exaggeration. He survived a chance off Bruce Yardley’s bowling, while on 2. Had he been made to pay for his benevolence by the man standing at short mid-on, writing the post-match report would have been a matter of Cntl+C and Cntrl+V.

But Patil, it seems, did not care much about the journalists. Over the course of his innings, which lasted 301 minutes and 240 balls, he showed he didn’t care much about any one. Be it Lillee, Yardley, Hogg or Pascoe, he spared none. And his treatment of Pascoe with special brutality was only expected. Twice in succession, in one over, Patil hooked his tormentor and both his shots cleared the ropes.

A series of bewildered and incredulous gestures followed. If you plan to watch the video again, do watch out for that moment when the commentator in bafflement confuses the batsman with Chetan Chauhan and then corrects himself.

In The Sydney Morning Herald on January 27, the former Australian player and cricket writer Bill O’ Reilly, in an article titled My hat off to Sandeep, wrote, “I detected a growing tendency among the patriotic Australians at the ground to brand the pitch so docile that the three pacemen who have slashed their way through all opposition at will, were bowling under hopelessly unfavourable conditions.”

Reilly being an Australian, people who are usually averse to the idea of praising their opposition, this part of his article sums up the impact of Patil’s innings.

The article goes, “I rejoiced in the spectacle. I have been waiting for far too long to see a top-class batsman go to the work on Australia’s pace pack and cut them back to size”

Sadly, in the second innings Patil failed to be third time lucky for his team. Needing to hang on for four and a half hour to force a draw, the Indian batsmen were down to 128/8. It took 9.2 overs of battling from the ninth wicket pair of Karsan Ghavri and Shivlal Yadav to save India the blushes of another loss.

Sandeep Patil’s Test career lasted for another four years. He retired at the age of 28, when most players only start maturing. He did play a few more entertaining innings — once he hit Bob Willis for 24 runs in one over, during his unbeaten 129 runs innings against England. But for a career which started with such promise, it faded faster than any spectator from Adelaide Oval would have ever expected.

This article has been published on SportsKeeda

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Drought in the land of Baggy Green: Fall of the Aussie Empire

Clarke and Crisis

he Frank Worrel trophy, 1995 is considered by many as the turning point of modern cricket. The series which marks the shift of power from West Indies to Australia, was controversial for many reasons and at the centre of the controversies was Steve Waugh, who was to later pivot his nation to cricket’s pinnacle.

Mark Taylor’s Australia won the series 2-1, beating West Indies at home after 22 years. Waugh gathered 429 runs at 107.5 a match, also collected a few bruises and went to sleep with his team jersey, socks and cap on, after the final match. It wasn’t just a victory of one nation over another. In many ways that series symbolised the triumph of grit over power, determination over raw talent and aggression over gentility.

In the first Test at Barbados, he was accused of dishonesty for claiming to have taken the catch of Lara, which T.V replays showed to be doubtful. Lara’s dismissal triggered West Indian batting collapse and eventually led to their loss. The second incident came in the third Test when Waugh collided with none other than the Carribean giant Curtly Ambrose. Ambrose exchanged intimidating glares and the Australian responded with verbal abuse, the incident went so far that the bowler had to be dragged away by his captain Richie Richardson.

With the transfer of crown, cricket was never the same again. Australians were a brute force. If you could not retaliate, you did not exist; if you could, well, you stood a chance for a hard-fought draw. In their heydays, I would not have expected an Australian bowler to replay Walsh’s courteous act of the 1992 World Cup. It would have been too foolish for a self-respected Australian to let an opposition batsman survive, so what if it is in the name of ‘sportsman spirit’.

The historic scuffle between Waugh and Ambrose

And that is what Australian cricket was about. Call it whatever you may, they took pride from it. John Arlott in his book, Concerning Cricket, published in 1949, defined ‘Australianism’ as a “single-minded determination to win”. Though written more than six decades ago — when cricket was still war but fought predominantly between England and Australia — Arlott’s sentiments echoed in our minds till even half a decade ago.

In their days of dominance, Australians were invincible; they could make the opposition’s conduct look ridiculously perfunctory. They could decimate the best of the players to the status of schoolboy cricketers. They could mock you, laugh at you, spit profanities and swagger out of the cricket field with medals and trophies.

Steve Waugh’s famous words, “You’ve just dropped the World Cup” (directed at Herschelle Gibbs after the latter dropped his catch during one of the defining matches of 1999 World Cup) had a distinct cocksureness that, given the fact that his team were playing against the tournament favourites and weren’t even in the semis, could have come from only an Australian’s mouth. Australia went on to win the match and then beat South Africa again in the semis and a match later they were world champions.

Nothing was impossible. A few beers down, they believed the word never existed and we should be thankful that they seemed perpetually drunk. To borrow from Arlott again, “Where the impossible is(was) within the realms of what the human beings can do, there are(were) Australians who believe(d) they can(could) do it.”

We loved to hate them. Hate Ponting for fake appeals. Hate Symonds for the monkey-gate scandal. And so on. But there was always a peculiar assurance that their empire would never cater to archeologists’ fancy. Call it colonial hangover, but most people would agree that there are few events scarier than to witness your ruler’s demise; for even if with disgust, you had always looked up to them.

So, seeing the Australians fold up for 47 runs against South Africa, earlier this year, was anything but heartening. That was not all. They struggled against a rather average Kiwi attack and were bowled out for 136 runs in the first innings of the Test match at Hobart — New Zealand won the match by seven runs to register their first win in Australia after 26 years.

he talks about the fall of the Roman Empire often conclude with riddled arguments. While there is Edward Gibbon’s theory of waning civic virtue, Ferril’s blaming military decline, and Toynbee and Burke’s calling the Empire rotten from the root, the post-Roman romantics have never been able to reach a consensus.

Similarly, for even the best of the chroniclers and finest of raconteurs it is hard to talk in exactitude about when and how the mighty Australians fell. Was it in India in 2001 when Sourav Ganguly’s men halted the Australian juggernaut in the historic series which ended 2-1 in favour of the hosts? Was it in 2003 when the same Indians drew a hard-fought series back in Australia’s own backyard? Or was it in 2005 when a resurgent English side snatched the Ashes away from where it had rested for almost 19 years?

You could pick any or agree on none. Rot never spreads in a day; it takes routine dumping to build a wasteland. However, if you look at the mentioned dates carefully, you would see a discordant pattern. Clamours rose in incoherence. They were omens of decay. But the ageing stars showed individual flashes and we were transported back to our reveries.

I understand the difficulty to part with proven warriors, who for so long had stomped the battlefield, never flinched, mastered their own wounds and the wounded alike. But being Australian they could have avoided such emotional hyperbole.

Since the start of 2009, Ponting has scored 1,959 runs at an average of 35 and if you consider this year alone, his average is down to 26. He has scored a hundred against New Zealand recently but it came after a wait of almost two years. Mike Hussey, whose performance is better than Punter but nowhere near the Mr. Cricket we knew, has scored 599 runs at an average of 37.43 in the last 12 months. And this I say without mentioning Hussey’s poverty-stricken average of 15 against South Africa and 7.6 against New Zealand.

What baffles is the kind of support they still garner from the country’s brightest brains.

Former Test batsman Dean Jones when asked about Ricky Ponting’s continuity replied saying, “Cricket Australia made the call that the criteria was to pick the teams that will play in the 2013 Ashes and the 2015 World Cup. I’ve got the feeling Ponting still wants both of those.”

Ponting goes down after his team's loss to India in this World Cup

It is hard to believe that the same Australians dropped Mark Waugh and more importantly Steve Waugh while at helm, and never allowed them to play another One-dayer after one dismal series in 2001. Similar fate ended ODI specialist Michael Bevan and wicket-keeper Ian Healy’s career before that. Michael Slater, part of each of the 16 Test winning Australian team became a burden only half a year later. Jason Gillespie was dismissed after scoring a double hundred, and Damien Martyn was divorced with heartless silence.

It was during the end of the Warne-Hayden-McGrath era when they attempted the oriental tear-jerking tradition and have since been dwelling in “interesting times”. Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Langer were all given extended run. And that Warne was reportedly asked to reconsider his retirement was possibly the final bolt on Arlott’s Australianism.

Still on a more consoling note, we could pardon their selectors and fans for the blur that covered their foresight. Apart from Michael Clarke, Mike Hussey,  Shane Watson and Brett Lee, Australia in the transition period has failed to produce players, who forget dominating could even stand up and compete in fisticuffs. David Hussey and Brad Hodge were way past their prime when they were drafted in, the selectors never showed any love for Martin Love and Stuart Macgill never benefited from being Warne’s understudy.

“Where the impossible is(was) within the realms of what the human beings can do, there are(were) Australians who believe(d) they can(could) do it.”- John Arlott

It is appalling to see that the team which could once afford to make players like Darren Lehman, Stuart Law, Damien Fleming and Andy Bichel watch from the sidelines, are now throwing up average domestic talents in every next series. Since 2008, 26 cricketers have made their debut in ODIs and a staggering 27 players have bagged the baggy green; while from 1995-2008, only 41 and 34 new players — in the respective versions — could earn national calling.

While, one should not ignore the fact that Phil Hughes, Tim Paine, Peter Siddle, Shaun Marsh and Marcus North have all shown considerable promise, either injuries or the strobe lights of international cricket have intermittently blighted their budding careers. And Mitchell Johnson, possibly the best of them all, now stands as an allegory which combines both these ailments.

Johnson paints the trite story of ‘what could have been’. The lanky player, who in 47 Tests has 1,287 runs and 190 wickets to his name, was once called thebest fast bowler in the world, by none other than Peter Roebuck. Now he looks “like someone auditioning for the part of snarling Australian fast bowler, not the chosen one,” at least in the words of cricket writer Osman Samiuddin. But the latest studded and tattooed look apart, injuries have never allowed him to perform to his capabilities and secure a regular place in the team.

Cameron White and Steven Smith, both of whom were popularly billed to do the undoable — to fill the vacuum left by Shane Warne — have looked clueless and flustered under enormous expectations. While Smith is still 22 and has time on his side, White’s Test career seems almost over. That’s not to say that White himself escapes blame. Some fatal tendencies of the Australian cricketers like preferring fishing over cricket (remember Symonds?) and pub brawls over press conferences remain unfathomable.

There are hopes that an ageing Doug Bollinger, a young James Pattinson or Pat Cummins will lend his fingers to the team’s revival. Still hopes they are and they float in limbo. It is ironical that there was a time, not many seasons ago, when one could not think of a better place to groom a budding cricketer than Australia. What has gone so awfully wrong and so soon in their cricket schools remains an enigma.

At times I am lured to give in to the thought that the world is being too harsh on the current crop. Like second generation celebrities, like lab mice, they are being treated with a mixture of cruelty and curiosity. I know it is too soon to measure Michael Clarke’s captaincy to that of Waugh, Taylor and Ponting’s. To compare Cummins and Pattinson to the calibre of McGrath and Gillespie would be absurd. But the Australians had taught us to stretch our imaginations beyond the facade of possibilities. And we had accepted their mastery even when they harried out batsmen, pushed our bowlers and demoralised our team in pre-match conferences. Twenty six years is a lot of time, enough to enslave you to habits, and time is what we need to realise that ‘Australianism’ needs to be redefined in our dictionaries.

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Sehwag and the Circle of Seasons

It was one of those occasions when deserted by your own vernacular you seek consolation in else's vocabulary and when even that is found to be depleted, you are left haywire–fixated on fixing a proper adjective to your newfound emotion. That emotion which allures both but falls neither on the lap of joy or sorrow.

Like it occurs to me quite often nowadays, I was dumbfounded and then appalled at my loss of words in describing Virender Sehwag's double hundred.

As I missed out on the live telecast of the match, (for reasons best known to the people in my office, the television was tuned to Aaj Tak) I had to rely on ESPN Cricinfo for score updates. "Sehwag reaches his 100 off 69 balls. And runs out Gambhir off the next ball. 176 for 1," tweeted they. All merry on this side. Viru had, after months of waiting, reached the triple figure and keeping the upcoming Aussie tour in mind its timing could not have been better.

Moments had passed in my juggling between Twitter and Facebook when someone updated their status pleading, "Sehwag, for heaven's sake don't score a double". The immediate response was to laugh; laugh out loud. I did and then regretted. The profundity of the Facebook status was much greater than seen. For what Sehwag was chasing was not a mere figure. For a generation born a couple of decades ago, it was a brutal invasion on their years of growing up. The childhood, the adolescence, there was so much to trade; so much to be traded to fill the next generation’s kitty. And as it often happens in periods of transition, our kin were reluctant to fritter away their remains. And trade but for whom—an impostor of our idol, a porcelain replica?

I remember this miserliness did not fall from nowhere; it's an inheritance we are carriers to. Somewhere in 1998, if not mistaken, I got into a minor war-of-words with my dad when he dismissed Sachin Tendulkar (at the pinnacle of his career) away calling him a debaucher. In his words, Azhar was the artist. With the touch of his brush, he had painted many of their dreams.

If the proverbial: "Miyan Kaptan Banoge? (Man, do you want to be the captain?)"—Raj Singh Dungarpur's casual offer to Azharuddin over a cup of tea — gave birth to the new-age casualness; Azhar also brought a necessary face-lift in the way we approached the game. The era of Jadeja and Robin Singh, was pioneered by their carefree captain. Much before Kaif, Yuvraj and the Rainas learned to dirty their laundries, Azhar, one of our finest fielders, had mastered the art of mud-mingling.

The small-town boy's rise to fame, jostling past the elders to elderliness, extra-marital fling, eventual divorce and re-marriage: Azhar gave them their first celluloid cricketer, before he himself robbed them off.

Of Azhar, it could be said that he was brash and unpolished.  There were stories about him being aloof, always being at loggerhead with the seniors of the team—even convicted of ending the careers of luminaries like Kapil Dev, Navjot Sidhu and Ravi Shastri. The media talked about his linkups with the underworld, with bookies.

Vinod Mehta in his autobiography The Lucknow Boy, recollects an incident where in a match against Pakistan, Azhar on winning the toss, pocketed the coin and blatantly claimed to have lost it to Aamir Sohail.

His crimes were fragrant, not that he cared to hide. And it was this puzzling impunity that separated Azhar from the rest.

Rohit Brijnath writes in his column for Cricinfo, "He (Azhar) was my favourite because no sportsman ever made me struggle so much, no Indian athlete demanded so much inner debate, no cricketer so confused the senses." He was liked because he wasn't perfect; he was liked because he never tried to be liked.

However, the turn of the decade changed it all. In the match-fixing fiasco, which still rests like an indelible scar on the face of Indian cricket, Azharuddin was found to be the most culpable of all sinners. And this blow was hard to swallow for even the most ardent of Azhar followers.

Somewhere between all this, but hardly under anyone's shadow, emerged a curly haired kid. His rise was inversely proportional to Azhar's fall. By the time the fixing scandal broke loose, he was already an established star. Tendulkar stood in contrast to the former’s frivolity. A complete antithesis, he was more consistent, hardworking, disciplined and lacked the petulance which his long-time captain was inebriated with. Our fathers' invention was fast-slipping out of their own embrace, they knew, still it was shameful to adopt the insignificants' imagination.

To the generation gone by, all things we found cool were scornful luxuries: Burgers, Pizzas, the new Colas, the word 'cool' and every other evil liberalisation brought. Sachin seemed to emblemise this change; he was fast, his batting was fizzy in a way and he could also be described using that word, if I am allowed to use it thrice in one paragraph. They looked at him with childish cynicism as if he was the reason why Campa Cola lost its vitality.

Our Tendlya would dance down the ground, swat the balls all around, score at run-a-ball (if not less than that) and then in between would endorse everything from Power shoes to VISA power. The coming generation of engineer-cum-writers, doctor-cum-actors, accountant-cum-singers who were bent on breaking conventional barricades had gotten their multi-tasker to look up to.

Around us all revolves a halo, a circle, which takes from one generation and passes to another. Before your bond of memories mature it gets transferred to someone you had once known to be unknown.

For some, Sachin exceeded the game itself. I know people who remember the exact Sachin innings which coincided with the appearance of their first pimple, and also those who would tell you when they first parted with the budding patch over their physiognomy and Sachin scored a duck and for months they never picked up a razor again.

Amidst all adulation and idolisation Sachin kept his conquest on. Undeterred by the flurry of out-field activities; he continued stretching boundaries, waitressing to the insatiable millions. Sehwag showed up and vanished and showed up again.

On his debut, which he made in a One-Day International against Pakistan in 1999, much less stouter than he now is, Sehwag looked totally innocuous. He scored only one run, before falling LBW to Shoaib Akhtar and went for 35 in the three overs he bowled.

His positioning in the batting order — at number seven, below the likes of Saba Karim, Khurasiya and Robin Singh — showed that even to the team management he was as inconsequential.

In his next outing in national colours, which came after almost two years of wilderness, Sehwag performed admirably well. In the fourth match of our Tri-series against Zimbabwe and Australia, he made 58 (off 54 balls) and then picked up three wickets to bag the Man-Of-the-Match.

So far so good. Sehwag did shine in the series but so did Vijay Dahiya. Conceiving him as a utility player, I even made him a regular in my favourite game, book-cricket.

Due to Sachin's unavailability for the tour of Sri Lanka, he was promoted to open the innings. Sehwag delivered a hidden message in his 69 balls century against New Zealand. I failed to decipher. It was the third fastest hundred by an Indian. But accidents do happen, I had said to myself.

However, he started chasing himself. In every innings thereafter, he started giving tuitions on hard-hitting. The nineties were nervous of him. Even when on 99 he would attempt for the big hits and if and when he faltered, there was no shame, no discontent. The jatt from Najafgarh who had hardly envisaged fame and feat would walk towards the pavilion with a self-assured contentment.

Blasphemous comparisons to Tendulkar were made. Stance, shots and even physical attributes were measured and when human vision failed, they resorted to graphics.

As if the need was to establish a dummy. During most part of the nineties when Sachin scored in losing causes, I had seen placards asking for 'Ten more Tendulkars'. Those statements were laudatory, these comparisons bordered on lunacy.

But soon, the dummy started looking livelier, at times shining brighter than the deity. Sehwag soon formulated his own brand of atheism. He preceded a number of players who would wear their heart on their shoulders, cover it with their armbands and advertise it to their fancy.

Harsha Bhogle's tweet after Sehwag reached his double hundred was, "I wonder sometimes if Sehwag achieves these landmarks because he doesn't worry about achieving them." It is true. Nothing bothers. Nothing worries him.  For nervousness had been parted with, when he parted with the placenta.

Wanting not to fall prey to the rules of evolution; not to let my dream become a requiem so soon, I have tried various tricks of sustenance. To my little cousin, in eulogies—guised as lullabies, I would preach how great a batsman Sachin was. How much faster he still was and how much more responsible and steady.

Flashbacks, now remind me how in stages of life we all are juxtaposed; and in clockwise alignment how 'me' and 'my cousin', 'dad' and 'me', we all stand. Around us all revolves a halo, a circle, which takes from one generation and passes to another. Before your bond of memories mature it gets transferred to someone you had once known to be unknown.

My cousin, who was barely four or five years old, at the time of my preaching, soon gave up all I had infused in him. He must have celebrated Sehwag's double-hundred. Sehwag, in the process of scoring also surpassed Sachin's 201, which was previously the highest individual score by any player in a 50-overs game. But the next time we meet, I will brag about how my hero still remains the first one to reach there. Bring it on.

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