Monday 18 April 2011

On not being God

What's the point of writing about Sachin Tendulkar? Any effort to encapsulate the genius is doomed to fail, just another drop in the thousands upon thousands of words that have passed before in vain. Inevitably the cliches end up tumbling out: weight of a billion people on his shoulders, insatiable hunger for runs...blah, blah. The matter is beyond doubt. He is God. The Master. With the possible exception of Bradman, a hoary old myth who exists only in half-believed chronicles and indistinct rolls of flickering film, he is the greatest batsman who ever lived, and probably the greatest sportsman on earth.

Rather like anyone unfortunate enough to bowl at him, I may as well try. This is a blog about being crap at cricket, so I suppose our theme is obvious: 'What can the Crap Cricketer take from the Great Cricketer?' Of course, it's like asking what the Alphaline Wessex service can learn from a Japanese Bullet Train, what McDonald's can learn from Claridge's. But still:

1. Balance
It helps, of course, that Sachin is a wee thing. It means he can transfer his weight more quickly. If your weight's going in the right direction, you're going to time it. Thus:


In moving onto the back foot the momentum is taking him backwards, but by the time he's into the shot all his weight is being transferred into it. Above, this dual process is happening against someone bowling at 80-something mph: that movement is decided upon and carried out in 0.4 of a second. He uses a heavy bat for a little chap, which when you combine with the balance means the shot can be little more than the tiniest push. And that means he's got more chance of timing the good length ball (second shot below)



2. Eye
Thanks to Bob Woolmer's magnificent book, we know a bit more about what constitutes a 'good eye'. It's not about eyesight. It's about the brain's ability to calculate the ball''s trajectory. Batsmen see A) the ball out of the hand, we follow it towards the pitch, lose sight of it, then B) Pick it up again once it's pitched, whereupon we make our last adjustments to movement off the pitch etc. Woolmer describes an experiment he carried out with Peter Kirsten (ex SA batsman) and some club players. They faced a bowling machine - as the machine released the ball, the lights in the indoor school were switched off. I forget the figures, but as I recall Kirsten was twice as likely to make contact as the club players. At professional speeds, the vast majority of your reasoning is happening as a result of A), which is why it's fortunate no one's ever spun it like Shane Warne at that speed.  Sachin, it's fair to say, is an infeasibly accurate predictive machine.

3. Batting Brain
And this is where it gets frustrating for the Crap Cricketer. The Crap Cricketer thinks about cricket a lot, to the point of writing an interminable blog about it. The Crap Cricketer is pretty sure that there are plenty of people who are much better than him - even professionals - who by dint of physical virtues such as the above, don't need to think about technique and tactics half as much. Listen to them being interviewed about the game they've played - all that horrific talk about 'good areas', 'executing disciplines'. It's so unjust. Of course, part of the problem is the journalists themselves. Every so often, they ask the right questions, and suddenly you see that these players aren't just extremely athletic automatons. I digress.

You don't need any such interview to understand the genius of Sachin. In Test Match terms, he and Jacques Kallis aren't a million miles apart. But in all formats of the game? Sachin's streets ahead. Kallis is, by and large, a run-a-ball man (especially if he gets out under 50). Sachin is a run-a-whatever's required man. He computes every risk the bowler poses with the field he has, and persistently selects whichever shots will bring him maximum runs at minimum risk. Bowler getting swing away at pace? Then he'll concentrate on working the off-line ball off his legs, or putting away the short one. Spinner finding prodigious turn? Then you'll rarely see him hit against it. Spinner finding less turn? Then he'll begin to take a few more risks, as long as the line and length are right. Fine leg in the circle? Then the walk across the stumps is on, but not if he's facing a bowler with a good yorker. Etc. Now of course it's easy to rule out the risky shots when you play the less risky ones so well, but Sachin's commitment to the right shot is almost autistic. Which leads us to...

4. Hunger
I love cricket. Absolutely love it. But the fact of the matter is, it's mentally knackering. I reach 50, say, and I start playing stupid shots because I think I can. Fuck, I've reached 12 not out and done that. By about August, I can barely find the enthusiasm to turn up to the ground because I'm sick of playing. I still do, because I love it...but it's a fractious relationship. I've played for 17 or so years, and since adulthood not a season's gone by without me thinking I should give up till next year. I've probably scored getting on for seven or eight thousand runs, give or take, playing once or twice a week, and mostly against fielding sides that Sachin would barely recognise as cricketers. I've had dips in form that have lasted for months, even whole seasons at a time, mostly due to this mental fatigue.

Sachin has scored nearly 15,000 Test runs. 18,000 ODI runs. 23,000 first class runs. Plus Christ-only-knows-how-many before he turned pro. He's never really lost his form in all that time. It's almost impossible to comprehend.

5. Magic
I've only ever seen him in the flesh once. It was India against the Duke of Norfolk's XI, at Arundel Castle. It's a pretty small ground, just about standard club size. I love watching proper cricket at a place like that - it really brings home how high the standard is. James Kirtley was bowling - a very good bowler, in his day. First thought - it often is when I watch pros at a small venue - 'Fuck me, he's fast.'

Neville Cardus once wrote of Ranjitsinhji: 'This dusky, supple vision of legerdemain. The honest straight ball was not met with the honest straight bat, but by a flick of wrist, and lo! The ball was charmed to the square leg boundary.'

Kirtley bowls. There's a tiny, barely perceptible movement from Sachin. A split second later, the ball crashes into the hoardings on the leg side. A split second after that, there's a crack of ball on bat echoing around the ground. And a split second after that, he completes his follow through - like many Indian batsman, the leg glance doesn't finish with the bat pointing vertically upwards, instead the bottom hand carries it right round, like the hand of a clock. Bang:


I don't actually remember how many he got. I just remember the shot.



No comments:

Post a Comment