Merchant Of Destruction

WHEN India played Australia on February 27, there were at least 18 Mumbaikars who had their television sets switched off. They were not at the Wankhede Stadium either. Sociologists all, these were the contributors to a learned collection just published by the Oxford University Press. Titled Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, this book contains essays on commerce, capital, castes and communities, but not a word on the island city's sport, not a mention of the most famous of its inhabitants. Perhaps it takes a lapsed sociologist to understand that if Bombay is indeed a metaphor for modern India, then cricket is a metaphor for Bombay, and one S.R. Tendulkar is now synonymous with cricket (and Bombay) itself.

For some 70 years now, Indian cricket has been held together by the Bombay School of Batsmanship. In the '30s and '40s, it was Vijay Merchant, softly aided by Rusi Modi; in the '50s, Vijay Manjrekar and Polly Umrigar; in the '60s, Dilip Sardesai, Ajit Wadekar and Manjrekar again; in the '70s and '80s Sunil Gavaskar, helped along by Dilip Vengsarkar and Ravi Shastri. Now in the '90s it has been mostly Tendulkar, with walk-on parts played by Sanjay Manjrekar, Vinod Kambli and Praveen Amre. True, we look to the South for our stylists—G.R. Viswanath and Mohammed Azharuddin come quickly to mind—and to theNorth for our six-hitters—think of Kapil Dev and before him of Salim Durrani. But with India 10 for 2 in the first few overs of a match, nothing is as comforting as the sight of a man from Dadar Union or Shardashram High School striding purposefully to the wicket. Batsmen from Bombay have scored in the vicinity of 100,000 runs for India, and not all of those in a lost cause. The most memorable of our victories—West Indies and England 1971, World Championship of Cricket 1985, England 1986—were brought about with three, sometimes four, Bombay bats-men in the first five. (The one exception here is the 1983 World Cup triumph.)

 Down the years, cricketers from Bombay have carried the hopes of millions of Indians; in Sachin Tendulkar's case, the hopes of roughly one billion minus eighteen. To (mis)quote a British statesman, "Never in cricket history has so much been owed by so many to so few."

This is the tradition to which Sachin Tendulkar belongs, the tradition which he has honourably embodied and richly embellished. From this history one might pick at least a dozen masters, but only three maestros. The first of these was Vijay Merchant, a magnificent all-round player, outstanding on bad wickets, but just a shade too cautious for our tastes. Merchant only lofted the ball after he had reached 250 or the monsoon winds had blown back to Africa—whichever was later. Sunil Gavaskar, the second of the truly great Bombay batsmen, was for the most part a cricketer in the Merchant mould. His game was also classically orthodox, but a late exposure to the one-day game and the example of Krishnamachari Srikkanth made him more daring towards the end—never better than in the century he hit in the Delhi Test against the West Indies in 1980 or in his 1987 World Cup blast against New Zealand at Nagpur.

In a book published less than two years ago, I incautiously claimed Gavaskar to be the best of the Bombay (and by extension Indian) batsmen. This despite an uncle born in Bombay, a child of the '40s, who holds Merchant to be without equal. But so swift has Sachin's progress been that we could both be wrong yet. For, he has lent a new dimension to Bombay batting through the power of his strokes, his love of the lofted shot, the urgency with which he seeks to dominate the bowling. Bowlers didn't much like Merchant and Gavaskar either, but the pain they suffered at their hands was dull and prolonged, not sharp and sudden. The difference is best captured by Gavaskar himself. When Sachin began his career, the Little Master lent him a pair of pads specially cut for small men. "I gave him those pads to help him run his singles more easily," commented Gavaskar later. "But he only hits fours and sixes."

Tendulkar is also more variously gifted than his predecessors. He can bowl a handy over or three, and is a fine fielder too. He will also, in time, make an attacking captain, eschewing the safety-first tactics preferred by Merchant and Gavaskar when they led India. Sachin is already the greatest cricketer produced by Bombay. But the finest of all its batsmen? I have my prejudices, and my uncle is in the next room as I write. Ask me again in five years time.