Giving the lie to the myth that India loses when Sachin scores a hundred

Amidst all the hoopla and attendant hype surrounding the lead-up to Tendulkar's hundredth ton, and the even more heightened h&h following his (final) achievement of this statistically awesome milestone, combined with the anticlimactic, though hardly bathetic result of the match (against Bangladesh), tongues have, inevitably, been wagging.

My own views on the matter have been frequently expressed; viz, that the actual hundredth hundred means very little in its own right. This is a man who, as all his fans proclaim, scorns personal milestones, concerning himself only with the job at hand, i.e. winning the game. As far as I'm concerned his greatness would be diminished not one iota if he had retired with only 99 centuries. (If anything, it may have added more of a Bradmanesque aura to his image.) I have also stated on numerous occasions that the average Indian punter doesn't give a toss about the result of a match as long as Sachin gets a hundred, never more true than during yesterday's match at the Sher-e-Bangla.

Personally, I am thrilled that the great man has finally granted Indian fans their most ardent (if not his own greatest) wish. Cricket can now dust itself off and get on with itself, and Sachin is now one step closer to retirement (unthinkable to anyone in India prior to yesterday's match). Don't get me wrong. I am a great fan of the maestro. Of his technique, his commitment, his enthusiasm, his modesty and the amazing depths of discipline, composure and grace under pressure which he always exhibits. He is a wonderful ambassador for the sport we love, and a throwback to a lost era of “gentle” manly behaviour (Bodyline notwithstanding). With that other gentleman of the game, Rahul Dravid, having bowed out, we are now closer than ever to final capitulation to the chest-wig hooliganism of Aussie-rules cricket.

But I do think that both cricket and India need to move on. I would like to see Sachin retire at his peak (or to be more precise a tad below his peak), to bow out on a high with the cheers of a billion fans ringing around the world like Great Tom (though to justify that simile, I guess we should hang about for century #101).

Who wants to see Sachin fade away from international cricket? Too stiff to dive in pursuit of a ball racing away to the boundary, too crampy to run that extra run, too arthritic to take a second-slip dolly catch, just too old to post a decent score.

I imagine, with a shudder, uniformed nurses trundling him out onto the field in a wicker wheelchair and propping him up in front of the stumps, holding a lilac parasol over his head, so that he can wobble his way to a score of three, and thus complete 20,000 test runs. A few years later he might be stretchered in and dumped onto the pitch during a match against Papua New Guinea, with 120,000 Eden Gardens spectators egging him on to edge his way to his 200th international fifty (he currently has 160 scores of between 50 and 99 in international matches).

Do we really want to see that?

Team India needs to let go of the talismanic hold that it has allowed Sachin to exercise over it for far too long. Never was this more possible, with Sehwag and Gambhir still in good (if not top) form, and with the likes of Raina, Sharma and (on current form) the potential replacement for Sachin and Viru combined - Virat Kohli - knocking up storms of their own.

But then it is not my call. (Is it?) I mentioned something about tongues wagging earlier. One of the most common threads I have come across is the canard that Sachin's hundreds are a luxury and a waste of time. That India always lose when he gets a ton. To all those naysayers I say “baqvaas!”

I have painstakingly compiled a list of all Sachin's international centuries (well, it would have been back-breakingly painstaking had I not been aided and abetted in this endeavour by Cricinfo's wonderful Statsguru engine), and segregated them by the result of the match in which each was scored*.

To summarise:

In tests (as you all well know by now) he has scored 51 centuries, of which 20 have been in a match India won, 11 where they lost, and 20 in drawn games.

His record in ODIs is even better: of his 49 ODI tons, 33 were in a match India won, 14 where they lost, and 2 in tied/no result games.

I will grant, though, that in recent years India have lost more Sachin-hundred ODIs than won. In tests, however, since 2001, India have won 15 matches in which Sachin got a ton and lost only 4.

(But please Sachin bhai, do consider retirement, na.)


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* Those of you who would like to see the list can email me, or post a comment here.