Related Links : India, South Africa in Ireland 2007 : Sachin Tendulkar : Yuvraj Singh
Sports writing is like that. It can make you look the biggest fool on this living planet on one day and on the next make you feel as if you are know-all type kind of genius. And it becomes more so eating your words kind of business if you write on the most unpredictable creatures in the world, the cricketers. The Second One Day International between South Africa and India made my misconceptions about the knowledge about the game take a nosedive. And the people who were on the tip of my fingers made it happen for me, Sachin and Yuvraj who obviously became the heroes of Friday’s victory.
Both got the better of me and in deep down somewhere it made me happy. Because these two individuals can give you more reasons for loving this game more than ever. I wrote that Sachin has been slow and tentative and Yuvraj has been irresponsible when it really matters. Both played brilliant innings to coast India home serenely.
Frankly, it was overall an excellent team exhibition for Ganguly’s 42, Karthik’s gritty 32 in a pressure cooker situation and also for keeping South Africa down to 226 and then Yuvraj and Sachin made it more special in more than one ways. This was because of Sachin’s irritatingly slow pace approach that made it all flabbergasted especially when it came against a lack-luster South African attack. Questions that were mostly ugly raised their heads about his effectiveness in the game, but on Friday he cleared all those doubts with one blistering knock embellished with 13 boundaries and two sixes. His ability was never under any scrutiny but his defensive approach made all of us think otherwise about his ideas about his game plan. An attackingly dangerous Sachin can tear any bowling apart but when he allows others to crawl all over him the he leaves the whole Indian set up in a misbalance. It has to be the only way a player of Sachin’s class has to build his innings. His aura, presence, magic has to be reflected in the game and on Friday it did reflect and the result is known to all and sundry.
The second best thing that has happened to Indian cricket is a resurgent Yuvraj which was needed most by the selectors who like to set up a foundation with the team which holds a right balance of youth and experience. Yuvraj plays the key role in the build up to a team which can take over from its senior pros. He is one man who leads the Indian side to the winning podium invariably when he tends to get his act right.
Well done on being the match winners which they are and they can be on any given day and thanks for making me realize that sports writing is a serious business which carries in itself the risk of eating words at any wrong turn.