Sachin wants Lara’s flair, Lara wants his fortitude
My first impression about Brian was his terrific balance, the agility at the crease to get to the pitch of the ball, and his great hands and wristwork... it’s God’s gift SACHIN TENDULKAR
NEW DELHI: For the better part of 17 years that their careers overlapped, Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara divided opinions. Lara’s flair or Tendulkar’s grace? Lara’s thrill or Tendulkar’s consistency? The questions never ceased, and neither were answers found. Yet, for the two protagonists, it was always about friendship and mutual respect for each other’s craft.
In a freewheeling session at the 20th edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday, the two rolled back years and shared vignettes from their illustrious careers, much to the delight of a packed house.
Seated barely a metre apart and joined by the combined tally of 56,715 international runs they scored, not to forget their shared legacies, the two put up another partnership, this of mutual admiration and perceptible respect.
Remembering their first meeting — in a hotel lobby in Toronto in 1990 — the two batting greats fondly looked back at an era long gone but revered regardless.
“There was an exhibition match in Toronto between West Indies and Rest of the World XI. I saw him in the hotel lobby, and we got along well possibly because we were the youngest players in our teams,” Tendulkar, the highest run-getter in the game’s history, said in a session moderated by HT’S managing editor Kunal Pradhan.
Tendulkar was 17 then, and yet to complete his first full season in international cricket. Lara, who had debuted the same year, was still finding his feet in a team full of generational greats. The two hit it off instantly.
“My first impression about Brian was his terrific balance, the agility at the crease to get to the pitch of the ball, and his great hands and wristwork...it’s God’s gift,” the 49-year-old gushed.
Lara duly returned the compliment, acknowledging Tendulkar’s skills against quality pace. “I had never seen an Indian batsman so accomplished against extreme fast bowling,” he said.
Asked to pick one batting trait from each other, Tendulkar marked Lara’s insatiable appetite for runs and his distinctive flair. Considering that the Trinidadian scored nine double tons in his 131-Test career, the third-highest in the game’s history, it seemed a fair choice.
There was no doubt that he (Sachin) had a far better batting technique than I had till the end of our careers... his patience, fortitude, and willingness to grind it out is something I admire a lot BRIAN LARA
“He had a huge appetite (for runs). He is not a big man physically but when it comes to the hunger to score, he was superb,” said Tendulkar.
“One point I categorically picked from him was pacing the innings and knowing when to take chances. If you see Brian’s long innings, you’d see there were a number of occasions when he took calculated risks. It was evident to me that if you have to play big innings there will be patches along the way where you need to accelerate and put the pressure back on the bowler. His ability to score big runs was incredible. If someone has scored 400 in an innings, do I need to say more?”
Lara, on the other hand, cited Tendulkar’s Sydney epic of 2004 to earmark his patience as a batting characteristic he would rather have.
Sick of being dismissed in the same fashion, Tendulkar had famously shunned the cover drive to hit an unbeaten 241 in the final Test of the 2003-04 Border-gavaskar Trophy.
“There was no doubt that he had far better batting technique than I had till the end of our careers. If I had the patience to score a double century without playing a cover drive — the shot that was getting him out — I might as well be smoking cigars every single time I went to bat. It was just unbelievable to see his discipline in Sydney. For me, his patience, fortitude, and willingness to grind it out is something I admire a lot,” Lara opined.
“I challenged myself not to get out for five days,” recalled Tendulkar. “It was a test of patience. I knew the Australians were testing my patience, so I wanted to test theirs.” While that Sydney knock remains a glittering milestone in Tendulkar’s career, the unbeaten 400 by Lara — still the highest individual score in Test cricket — continues to be a benchmark of batting dominance.
Battling woeful form and with his team 3-0 down in the four-test series, the West Indies legend f a mo u s l y wrested back his world record from Matthew Hayden barely six months after the Australian had hit 380 against Zimbabwe.
Lara humbly put it down to fate. “It was destiny. I barely had 100 runs in six innings before that, so there was no way I was thinking of scoring 400. We were 3-0 down and we needed to at least draw the game as a worst-case scenario. To get 400 was truly incredible,” he said.
The two also reminisced an instance from 1994, when the then newly crowned world champions Pakistan squared off against Rest of the World XI. Playing in Toronto’s Sky Dome on an artificial pitch, the fast bowlers were asked to bowl from 15 paces after Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh got the ball to lift dangerously. “I think they (Pakistan) scored around 340-350 runs but we chased it down in 38-40 overs. We had a 170-180-run partnership. Brian scored a hundred while I remained unbeaten on 70 or 80-odd. But that was a game where Brian realised there are no friendly matches,” Tendulkar said.
“They had Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and Imran Khan in their ranks, and when we started knocking the ball around, we noticed that the lines had completely vanished,” Lara remembered. A Waqar Younis bouncer went for six byes, and when the pacer bowled another short ball, Tendulkar pulled him into stands, “60-70 rows back,” Lara said.
“That’s when I knew I was batting with a genius,” Lara said.
For the two batters who loved to stamp their authority on the bowlers, their approach to batting was remarkably stark. The feeling of invincibility, Lara revealed, never touched him.
“My approach to batting was survival and staying out in the middle,” Lara said. “I felt I needed to survive for the first 4 5 mi n u t e s a n d g e t the momentum in my favour. I always thought the bowler has 70% chance to get me out and I have 30% chance to survive, but if I bat for an hour, the equation would change in my favour. Later in my innings. I could tell I was mentally and physically dominating the opposition. That’s when I felt — not exactly invincible — but in total control of the proceedings.”
Tendulkar, on the other hand, said he had days when he felt “nothing can go wrong”. “There are times when you walk out in the middle feeling nothing can go wrong, but there’s always a very thin line between confidence and overconfidence. Sometimes you feel you can play rash shots and get away with it. You look at the bowler’s body language and you know where he is going to bowl and you set yourself up for the big one. They come through sometimes and sometimes you are walking back to the dressing room.”
FOR THE TWO BATTERS WHO LOVED TO STAMP THEIR AUTHORITY ON THE BOWLERS, THEIR APPROACH TO BATTING WAS REMARKABLY STARK