Tendulkar, the Romantic

CLR James, in Beyond a Boundary, writes thus:

“New technique consists in lessening such margins [of error], not in maintaining or expanding them. Some young Romantic will extend the boundaries of cricket technique with a classical perfection. .. He will drive overhead and push through any number of short-legs, as W.G. used to do, so that a whole race of bowlers will go underground for fifteen years as they did once, and once more emerge with new tricks. .. Our Romantic will do these things or other things – what he will – and the big battalions will follow in his train. We shall extol his eyesight, his wristwork, his footwork, his audacity, to which some nationalist fanatics will add his ancestry and climate. He may come from Pudsey or South Sydney, Nawanagar or Bridgetown. But wherever he comes from, and whatever he does, he will be doing what W.G. did – so reshaping the medium that it can give new satisfactions to new people.”

When James says “he will drive overhead”, he probably didn’t envisage a batsman driving the ball over the keeper’s head as Tendulkar did against the bowling of Lee in the first innings of the Perth Test. The stroke, however, was executed with every ounce of the “classical perfection” that he mentions, and was the perfect response to the conditions in which it was played. It was not the first time that Tendulkar had played that stroke either; he had played a similar stroke against Ntini in the first innings of the Johannesburg Test in late 2006. Not only were the shots audacious, they also entailed no more risk than a conventional cut shot or front foot cover drive would.

I don’t know if the “big battalions will follow in his train” but there is no reason for them not to. Of course, they might need to put in a few hours of practice in the nets before they are able to pull it off.