One final time. One final time India will take the field with Sachin Tendulkar. Thursday, at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, begins the final instalment of Tendulkar’s multi-levelled retirement.
First, many years ago, he said he would not play Twenty20 internationals. Last year he had enough of the one-day game. This year everything must go: he has already bid farewell to first-class cricket with Mumbai and even retired from the Mumbai Indians and the Indian Premier League (note of caution: nobody really ever retires from the IPL).
Now he will be all gone after this second Test against the West Indies is over.
Wonder about that for a moment: a cricket world without Tendulkar remains unimaginable. But do not wonder for too long, because it is doubtful the West Indies will give you that much time in the first place.
Their batsmen were abysmal in the first Test in Kolkatta, the match over in three days and India only batting once. They might get a better batting surface in Mumbai though, what with everyone wanting a first hundred in nearly three years from Tendulkar.
Even the curator at the ground, Sudhir Naik, cannot help but be swayed by the force of this farewell. Groundsmen the world over can be contrary, cussed souls, often purposely sabotaging the home side. Not Naik though, who has not only produced good wickets recently, but appears keen on contributing to a goodbye hundred.
“I will be happy if he gets a hundred because I want that,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “I also want the century because he is our boy, Bombay boy. He has done so well all his career, so let people remember him forever [that in his] last match [he made a century].
“He is good enough to do it himself. He does not need my help. This wicket is good enough for batting so that might automatically help him.”
More than the challenge – or not – the wicket may offer, the concern is about the challenge, or lack thereof, posed by the West Indies.
After that first morning at Eden Gardens, they looked exactly like what they were: bit-part actors, rushed in to make possible a grander scene not because they are indispensable, but because, you know, they were hanging around with a little time to spare.
The problem is that it is in the shorter formats that a truer, clearer sense of the West Indies is apparent, not over five days. They have a workable bowling attack no more and can hardly afford the news that Kemar Roach’s shoulder injury – which made him sit out the first Test – has forced him to return home.
It is their batting that is the real problem; over two innings in the first Test there was a solitary half century, from Marlon Samuels. Many of them got starts across both innings. In the second, four of the top five made over 30; there were eight double-figure scores in the first innings and the entire top five batted for at least 40 minutes, which is ample settling in time.
Their coach Otis Gibson sounded a little fed up in the run-up to Mumbai.
“There is only so much talking any coach can do,” he said. “When you play five batsmen, and you sit down and stress the importance of those five batsmen, and you set yourself a challenge of batting a day and a half in the first innings, it is then up to those five batsmen to negotiate whatever the opposition bowlers throw at them and hang around for five days.
“[But] When you have a run-out and a couple of soft dismissals within those five batsmen then it puts pressure on everybody else. That is exactly what happened. We have to get better. We have to learn those mistakes and try not to repeat them.”
If not sending Tendulkar off with a 101st international hundred, India will at least be confident of bidding him adieu with a 72nd Test win of his career. But in years to come nobody will remember anything about this Test series, not Rohit Sharma’s century, or wickets for Mohammad Shami.
None of the detail will matter as much as the big picture, forever altered in Mumbai by the departure of Tendulkar.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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