Cricket: Tendulkar a modern master

India's Sachin Tendulkar celebrates his 35th test century, against Sri Lanka. Picture / Reuters

Until you have been to India, it is impossible to get a sense of what cricket means to this nation of unbelievable riches and unimaginable poverty.

Find an open space and you will find a game of cricket.

Those that excel at the game are exalted. Only the likes of Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma are placed on a higher plane.

With Sachin Tendulkar's passing of Sunil Gavaskar's world record of 34 test centuries last week, he now occupies a permanent place in India's consciousness.

Tendulkar's 35th three-figure score was made in Delhi but born in Mumbai, a teeming mass of humanity squeezed into an improbably small spit of land.

Its population is put at anywhere between 12 million and 17 million souls, many of them lost, who are constantly on the move. But on December 10 the city, by all accounts, stopped in its tracks.

When his journey to 100 finished, the questions started: where does he sit in cricket's pantheon?

Given that a certain Don Bradman of Bowral, a town in such contrast to Mumbai it is difficult to believe they exist on the same planet, is without dispute the greatest batsman, the debate must centre around who is second.

The shortlist would include West Indians George Headley and Brian Lara. Graeme Pollock from South Africa. England's Wally Hammond and Herbert Sutcliffe. Greg Chappell, perhaps.

But would any have been better than Tendulkar?

Statistics are a predictable fallback when ranking the greats but they tell only a portion of the story.

Sutcliffe, Pollock, Headley and, of course, Bradman are the only players to have averaged more than 60 in tests with a minimum of 20 innings.

But none of them carried the burden of being their country's best one-day batsman as well.

Tendulkar has scored close to 3000 more one-day international runs than Inzamam ul-Haq, his nearest challenger. He has scored a staggering 38 ODI centuries, so has 73 international 100s.

His strike rate in ODIs is 85 runs per 100 balls, so he's obviously not playing for himself.

"He is undoubtedly the most talented player I have seen," Wasim Akram told Mumbai's Mid-day newspaper.

New Zealand cricketer Matthew Hart said that without question Tendulkar was the best batsman he'd ever played against. "I remember vividly being out there fielding thinking 'man, it's the best seat in the house, this is a genius going berserk'."

That encapsulates why Tendulkar must be ranked as the greatest of the modern batsmen, ahead of the likes of Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting.

"I've always thought he's the best batsman I've seen or played against," Ponting once remarked.

He creates a febrile sense of anticipation every time he strides to the crease.

With it he has remained almost painfully humble, a Ferrari being the only extravagant display of his wealth, and private.

When he went out in his home city, Tendulkar for years wore a disguise so as to not attract attention.

In an interview with Wisden two years ago, he acknowledged the lack of normality in his life since breaking into the Indian team aged just 15.

"Obviously, I can't roam around like everyone else, and given a choice, I'd love to do normal things.

"I could say that I didn't get to do all those things that a normal teenager would do, but then again, not many people get the opportunity to do what I do."

He listens and accepts advice from a range of sources. Most notably his wife Anjali, a doctor, who played a big part in allaying his anxiety as he tried to overhaul Gavaskar's record.

Tendulkar has adapted his batting over the years. He is not the dasher he was during the early-90s and some fans find this hard to take. Indians like their deities to be flawless, not fallible.

Technically, Tendulkar might be the closest to perfection playing the game today.

"Look at the stillness of the head, the straightness of his backlift, the ease of playing shots off either the front foot or the back foot and, of course, the range of shots that he possesses against both pace and spin in all kinds of conditions," said Gavaskar after watching his record disappear.

His record-breaking 109 against Sri Lanka was not a classic.

Not like his century (114) at Perth in 1992, an innings he rates his best in test cricket.

But following his world-record ton, he was fully aware of its meaning.

"There have been very few moments in my life when I have got emotional. But this time I felt very different," he told reporters, dedicating the feat to his recently-departed father. "This was a very important hundred for me."

And for millions upon millions of his countrymen.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY