The Joy of Watching a Sachin Tendulkar Century

Watching cricket being played in New Zealand had always been demanding. Until the last tour of India, it had required lot of mental toughness, as India had always failed to conquer this part of the cricketing world. It also requires loss of sleep. Having worked non-stop for more than 10 days, my body badly wanted some rest. But my mind had other priorities. Before the start of this tour itself, I had believed that this Indian team is far better than the other Indian teams that visited this nice beautiful country on the eastern most part of the world. Even though the T20 games were a bit of a disappointment, the ODI's provided much needed relief and the icing on the cake was the winning of the series, the first ever by any Indian team.

But test cricket in the Kiwi country had always been a tough proposition. New Zealand had always great bowlers and some one or the other would turn up for the team every time. Richard Hadlee, Ivan Chatfield, Shane Bond, Danny Morrison, Shane Bond Darryl Tuffey had always proved nemesis to the visiting Indian team. Even the umpires had also contributed to a great extent to New Zealand's victories. But that was not the case in this tour. Having bundled the New Zealand batsmen under 300, Indian batsmen didn't have much of a threat from any of the New Zealand bowlers. Despite getting some good movement in the air, the New Zealand bowlers offered no threat to the in-form batsmen. What wouldn't fascinate a die-hard cricket fan than a good solid batting display and add to that a convincing Sachin Tendulkar Ton.

Sachin Tendulkar over the past few years had always played second fiddle to other players. He had been assigned the job of making other batsmen play around him. This was the role that Rahul Dravid had done splendidly throughout his cricketing career. Even if Tendulkar had scored a decent score, it was overshadowed by some other batsman's charismatic batting. Be it the century he scored against Australia at Sydney and Adelaide or the one he got in Nagpur, there were other things in the match that subdued Sachin's innings. 

But in this innings of Sachin, we could see the vintage Sachin who would destroy the opposition bowlers. The best of the shots was the backfoot punch in the region between point and cover. It is not an easy shot to play, considering the bounce of the wicket and Sachin's small stature. Make small mistake, the ball would loop in the air, offering an easy chance for the fielders in the slip or at point. But that was not the case when Tendulkar plays it  with so much of authority. Other than the life he was provided when being at 15, it was a blemishless innings, with an air of authority and class. 

If he had  rotated the strike, gave more strike to the likes of Sehwag, Yuvraj, Dhoni et al in the ODIs, he held his innings beautifully and forced Yuvi and Dhoni to rotate the strike. After a long time, Sachin had played the innings to his terms, instead of the guy at the other end. 

Despite having worked for more than 12 hours for 10 consecutive days, I just couldn't resist the desire of watching Tendulkar's innings even if it required to lose some sleep and get up at 3 in the early morning. The joy of watching of a Sachin Tendulkar's century is just uncomparable. I can atleast proudly say that I had been a witness to each run that Sachin scored to reach his 42nd Test Ton.