“Representations at the very highest levels of cricket – Hail Brian, Steve and Sachin!”

Sep 08, 2013 Sports

Colin E. H. Croft
Players representing Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, and others who play in other associated teams too, at Champions League 2013, must be physically tired, considering all of the cricket that some of them have played already in the long 2013 cricket season.
Yet, there is much, much more cricket to come even before this very eventful year ends!

Steve Waugh

Already, due to a special country friendship between West Indies and India, having coinciding schedules, and a small misunderstanding in another cricketing friendship, West Indies will now play two Tests in India, ODI’s too, filling a gap that has been left when India and South Africa had a slight recent fall out.
West Indies Cricket Board must be smiling all the way to the bank, the coffers an almighty dark green, for it is known to all that any fray against India always brings in good dosh. Coming so soon after the highly successful Caribbean Premier League, this short tour can be seen as lovely icing on a wonderful 2013 cake!
Also, similarly, players from other Caribbean countries, who like those from T&T, participated in CPL, happening just after Champions Trophy, then playing against India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, before taking on the Indians and New Zealand later, must be feeling the massive efforts too, to produce continuously.
But they will all want to play against India, as those two Tests will have very special relevance, the short series certainly underwritten to crown the truly magnificent career of Mumbai and India’s Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
He, along with Trinidad & Tobago and West Indies Brian Charles Lara, and New South Wales and Australia’s Steve Rodger Waugh, have been the very best of class of batting contemporaries of the last twenty years!
“The Master” will play in those two Tests even if he has to drive to the crease, making him the first, and probably only person to have played in 200 Test matches. Never, I am nearly sure, will this happen again!
Junior Waugh’s first Test was Boxing Day’s Test, 1985, against India. By the time he was finished with the international game, in 2004, he had played 168 Tests and 325 ODI’s, for a total of nearly 18,500 runs. Waugh averaged a wonderful 51.06 in Tests and a surprisingly relatively poor 32.90 in ODI’s.

Brian Lara

His best innings, for me, was his only double hundred, 200, against West Indies at Kingston in 1995.
“The Prince” was easily more stylish and flair-filled, and much more productive too. Lara’s 131 Tests and 299 ODI’s, from debut Test in 1990, against Pakistan, to final ODI, in 2007, produced nearly 22500 runs. BL averaged an excellent 52.88 in Tests and a very acceptable 40.48 in ODI’s.
His best innings, for me, perhaps the best ever played in contemporary cricket, was his 153 no, against Australia, at Kensington Oval, Barbados in 1999.
Now come the last few Test games of the third of that massive batting triangle!
For Sachin to have outlasted the other two is an achievement on its own, so ferocious has each been at making bowlers world-wide suffer severely for being born at the best time for batsmen since the 1960’s.
Sachin’s returns have been astounding, absolutely unbelievable. In, so far, 198 Tests and a mind-boggling 463 ODI’s, he has scored an incredible nearly 34,500 runs, averaging a truly impressive 53.86 in Tests and a quite enterprising 44.83 in ODI’s .
His best, for me, was also against Australia; 214 at Bangalore, in 2010.
All three innings, incidentally, were winning ones!
Just to think of those numbers alone, as a bowler, gives headaches. Also, mentioning their other first class runs, outside of Tests and ODI, could make eyes run bitter tears.
Already, we miss their presence!
None of these three players ever gave any impression that they were ever tired of playing the game, or even of batting, but simply decided, on their respective days of retirement, Lara at age 38, Waugh at age 39, soon Sachin at age 40, that they had had enough. Each could have played at least another five years!
There will always be conjecture and heated arguments as to whom of the three was the best!

Sachin Tendulkar

Overall, over the last two decades, it has been extremely difficult for anyone anywhere associated with cricket, to be objective, with Sachin perhaps always winning that race maybe because of India’s massive population of more than a billion.
It really does not matter. All three will always be great cricketers!
Considering those three, the guys who play in Champions League 2013 should not be complaining about the work that they will have completed by the end of that competition, then being perhaps selected for West Indies to India, then going on later to New Zealand.
Professional players must do it when they can!
Former West Indies fast bowler Ian Bishop was always pragmatic about retirement, always reminding that “retirement can be a very long time.”
Considering that the average human is living much longer nowadays than ever before, all we can hope is that Sachin, like Brian and Steve, has a wonderful retirement. Enjoy!