Many players have talent matching Sachin’s, but perish early.
As everyone celebrates Sachin Tendulkar’s 20 years in international cricket, your columnist wonders if it was such a great idea for the selectors to throw him to the deep end of the pool when he was just 16. Make no mistake — Karachi on November 15, 1989, with Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Abdul Qadir firing on all cylinders was indeed the deepest end the pool had. Though Sachin stamped his class on only his second Test, that first one was not such a happy experience; in fact, it made the debutant question whether he really belonged on the big stage.
But Sachin, more than cricketing talent and technique, is gifted with an extraordinarily peaceful mind that has made him endure the pressures and expectations with equanimity. Several others, though they have mad matching talent, perished in our collective obsession of discovering young prodigies.
New Zealand’s star batsman of the 1980s, Martin Crowe, once said: “If I had been picked at 22, it might have been a whole different career.” Crowe was picked to play for his country at 19, when just out of school, and spent his Test match trying, and failing, to hold on to his helmet, which Jeff Thomson kept knocking off. Now, Crowe did achieve a lot in his career, but a revealing statistic is that from age 22 to 34 he averaged 54, but finished with only around 45 because he had a bad end and — you guessed it — a very bad beginning.
Many others were a lot less lucky, got to play a lot less for their country, some not at all, and some vanished. Sachin’s pal Vinod Kambli made his debut some years after Sachin’s but had a spectacular run in the beginning, so much so that he said he had taken the stairs to Sachin’s elevator but did manage to catch up. Well, Kambli took the elevator down and played his last Test when he was still in his mid-twenties. Wasim Jaffer, another one spotted in his teens, is still struggling to cement his place in the Test side despite some very good innings. But these are names you have heard of.
Around the time that Sachin and Kambli were making a name for themselves, India was discovering another young prodigy in Amol Majumdar. Majumdar was an instant success with his unbeaten 260 in the Ranji pre-quarter final for Mumbai against Haryana on his first-class debut in 1993-94. He has just become the highest run-getter in the Ranji Trophy, but never got to play for India. Neither did Amarjeet Kaypee, whose record Majumdar broke.
Many of you may have heard of young Sarfaraz Khan, who early this month scored 439 in the Harris Shield, the Mumbai school tournament where Sachin and Kambli were first noticed, breaking a record that had stood for 46 years. But you may not have heard of R Nagdev — not many have, he held the previous record.