IPL 2010: Sachin Tendulkar and other golden oldies have chased my blues away with sublime cricket

he blues have vanished. I am less wistful about what cricket used to be from the time the previous blog was written less than 24 hours ago.
It didn’t take much, actually, to get the mood upbeat. In Monday night’s high profile match between Mumbai and Kolkata, Sachin Tendulkar played a sublime straight drive off Shane Bond in the first over itself to send the capacity crowd in raptures. By the time he won the match for Mumbai with an unbeaten 71, the entire city had gone delirious and I was in the swing of T20 madness again.
There was a beauty to Tendulkar’s batsmanship that belied the hurly-burly of T20 cricket. He could, in fact, have been playing in a Test match, such was the technical correctness of his tenure in the middle. The straight drive apart, he played a couple of silken cover drives and two dainty flicks off the Kiwi pace ace, most of which found the fence without being hit by too much power.
Tendulkar not only timed his shots exquisitely, but also found gaps in the field unerringly. There was little of the kind of manic hitting one usually sees in T20 cricket, though his young India teammates Ishant Sharma must’ve felt the impact of two bludgeoning blows to mid-wicket off deliveries pitched on the off stump or thereabouts. Even these hoicks were well-placed, aiming for the gap rather than clearing the fence.
Indeed, Tendulkar did not hit a single six in his innings of 71. Against Delhi too in an earlier match, he had scored 63 without a six hit. Yet, in both these matches, he had the best strike rate amongst batsmen from either side nonetheless. When you consider that opposing teams have had such uninhibited strokeplayers as Sehwag, Dilshan, De Viliers and Gayle, the genius of Tendulkar comes across more emphatically.
What has emerged after watching Tendulkar in this IPL is that fundamental batting skills have a place in T20. While it is imperative to improvise, there is no need for total compromise. Mindless slogging may work every once in a while, but more often than not, true-blue quality is likely to succeed.
Tendulkar’s form over the past 7-8 months has been so magnificent that people have been wondering whether he has not got a third wind. Having seen him from the time he made his international debut in 1989, one can only say that he seems to have turned the clock back 10-12 years back when he was considered to be at his peak. Now he seems to be at the pinnacle of his form, and in all three formats: Tests, ODIs and T20.
Interestingly, Tendulkar leads the charge of the Golden Oldies in this edition of the IPL too. Jacques Kallis, Matt Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Chaminda Vaas, Shane Warne, Anil Kumble and Muttiah Muralitharan, along with Andrew Symonds and Viru Sehwag (not Golden Oldies yet, but veterans nonetheless) are some of the other players who have made a more striking impact than most of the younger players.
This tells me that even in T20 – considered to be the arena for young arms, legs and lungs, experience and acumen – the value of experience and acumen may actually be greater.
Which makes me feel good and wear my own years more lightly.