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Maestro’s Maha100 has a Godot hangover
As heartbreaks around Sachin Tendulkar’s 28 dismissals in the 90s go, this one at Wankhede was the most excruciating and the most feared too.
The gap between agony and ecstacy, between deafening sound and pin drop silence, between a filling up stadium and instantly empty stands, between just six runs and a catch on a rising delivery Tendulkar knew he should have left untouched — lay the ruins of an epochal moment, a moment whose time has still not come.
As Tendulkar looked back, hoping desperately to find a magical hole in Darren Sammy’s hands at second slip, you could see that his heart had jumped out of his mouth — same was the case with his millions of fans across the globe. He had made a solid start in the morning, adding 27 sureshot runs handsomely to his Thursday’s score of 67, and that included a resounding six. He was as far away from any hint of nervousness as Arctic is from Antarctic and yet life got to him.
Had the master gotten over his genetical nervousness of the 90s, had Rampaul not tempted him with a riser, had Tendulkar glued up the concentration a bit more, it would have been a 100 that would have been a defining moment for Indian cricket — what better than India’s tomorrow, Virat Kohli, at one end and India’s yesterday and today, Sachin Tendulkar, at the other end telling you the path Indian cricket is on. It would have been yet another milestone for the maestro but a huge relief/joy for the waiting-with-bated breath nation and history that none will probably create after Tendulkar.
But some good things have to wait, and this one is having a Godot hangover. For the last seven Test matches, four against England and three against West Indies, the headline grabber has been the impending Maha100, the 100th 100, the centurion century, something that Ravi Shastri said has turned from being a monkey to a guerrilla on Tendulkar’s back.
Tendulkar’s last century came in Nagpur, during the World Cup and against South Africa. In Test, he scored his last ton against South Africa in Cape Town on January 2, 2011 when he made 146. He did not go to the away series in West Indies right after the 2011 World Cup and fell out of luck at Lord’s where the chant for the Maha100 had been the loudest.
We understood how Lord’s has been biased against Sachin, not letting him go beyond the 30s in Test matches ever. We waited in patience at the rest of the grounds too and that included Trent Bridge (he scored 16 & 56), Edgbaston (1 & 40), The Oval (23 & 91), Ferozeshah Kotla (7 & 76), Eden Gardens (38, one innings) and now at Wankhede (94).
As Tendulkar tried to shield his agony by walking facedown into the helmet to the dressing room, there was pin drop silence, a silence Dhoni may never have witnessed while walking into the middle. The crowd could not believe their God had erred, that too at home. Neither could Tendulkar.
But then tomorrow is yet another day and that day is now slated to come for India and Tendulkar all the way Down Under — either in Melbourne or Sydney or someplace else. But it is a day that will definitely come, making it worth your wait. From that day in England when Sachin Tendulkar scored his first ton at age 17, to now his feverishly awaited 100th 100, possibly in Australia, at age 38, — some achievements never age, or for that matter, say die.
