I had lost a lot of my zeal for a debate on Sachin after the 90s. We had scrutinized every aspect of his batting to its limits; compared him with batsmen from all eras and teams. We rattled off facts, opinions and judgments. And eventually reached a point of no returns, because by then he had already reached a zone of his own. Towards the end of 90s, Sachin vs Lara debates lacked the intensity; Sachin vs Mark Waugh sounded ridiculous; Sachin vs Inzamam was an outdated joke. Ponting in the noughties threatened to get into Sachin-Lara zone, but never quite sealed it.

A part of the zeal returned a few days back, when Siddhartha Vaidyanathan wrote a blogpost on ‘Sachin and the clutch question’. This was not another skeptic making a callous point to undermine Sachin’s greatness. In fact, this is by someone, who I would happily concede is a bigger Sachintard than me. He wasn’t so much as making a point as thinking out in an open forum, I guess. It generated a lot of interesting comments too. As a follow up, he wrote another lovely post on tangential observations related to the topic. While I largely agree with him on his thoughts about greatness and history’s judgment, I wouldn’t share his doubts on Sachin’s lack of a “a single transcendent event to fix him in permanent memory”. This is why:

In many ways, Cricket is different from other sports. It’s harder for a cricketer, more so for a batsman to stamp his legend through one single transcendent event. Diego had it, so did Zizou and Jordan. Also Woods and Sampras – but in an individual sport, it’s a lot easier to evaluate. The problem with Cricket is that it doesn’t have a structure where it leads to one grand stage, one definitive achievement where a player can seal his status as a legend. Perhaps the ODI World Cup is the closest such thing in Cricket and Sachin, despite raising his game in World Cups, didn’t quite seal the moments in the final. But to place so much emphasis on just two innings of a two-decade career is unfair and stupid.

In Cricket, legend is largely achieved in parts, series after series, match after match. Like many people had pointed out in Sidvee’s blog, Jordon or Zidane had the advantage of lying flat all match/tournament and seal the definitive moment in a few minutes of inspired magic, but for a batsman, one mistake and his date with history goes awry, and one inspired boundary doesn’t quite have the symmetrical effect.

Amongst the cricketers, some batsmen seem to have come closer to immortalizing themselves with a single transcendent innings more than Sachin. Lara had his almost divine 153*, Laxman had his Kolkata masterclass, Steve Waugh defied near death (facing an angry Ambrose was nothing less) to tilt the balance of power in world cricket with his 200 in Sabina Park. Is it fair to argue that Sachin is not as big a clutch player as some other batsmen are? Here is my take:

The problem with Sachin is that he is consistently brilliant, unlike a Lara or a Laxman. Lara’s peaks stood out because of his troughs, and not because his peaks were superior to Sachin’s. Laxman’s is a similar case too. It’s almost as if a bit of mediocrity otherwise helps to contrast the finest moments even better.

Take Lara’s 153 at Bridgetown for instance, and juxtapose that with Sachin’s 136 against Pakistan at Chepauk. Two legends of modern day cricket, whose careers ran parallel for more than a decade, quite extraordinarily had a shot at their career-defining-moment hardly a couple of months apart.

Coming on the back of a first innings duck; chasing 271 against a Pakistan attack that included Wasim, Waqar and Saqi (at his best); on the last day of the test; with the team score at 82/5; fighting back spasms; overcoming a highly controversial dismissal (Ganguly was wrongly given out caught off a bump ball); with Mongia for company; Sachin raised his game to a level that even he hadn’t reached before. Walking in at six for two, it was the occasion that his body and mind had been waiting for all his life, the moment to leave a definitive transcendental event for posterity, an everlasting stamp of his genius. And he took it, just like Lara did 2 months later in Bridgetown against Australia in a not too different situation. He had a higher target but had the cushion of a better start and a greater support from the lower order.

But there was one difference, Lara’s innings lead to a victory and Sachin’s didn’t. With ten odd runs shy of target, Healy dropped Lara, and with 17 runs away from target, Akram took Sachin’s catch. That was that. One moment of luck was all that separated Lara’s finest moment from Sachin’s most haunting. Also when Sachin left, there were 3 wickets in hand, whereas Ambrose joined Lara when 60 runs were required and only Walsh to come in.

At an individual level, a batsman can only impact those clutch moments and hope those moments prove to be the difference between a victory and a defeat for the team.

If you judge a batsman by his ability to stamp his authority in clutch moments as an individual, Sachin is far ahead of the rest. When Taylor’s Aussies came to India, with Warne having established himself as the best spinner in the world by then, they had pretty much conquered the rest of the world except India and Sri Lanka (was still an ordinary test team then). The pre-tour hype had reached insane proportions. It was as much a Sachin vs Warne battle as it was India vs Australia. For a batsman already hailed as an all-time great, Sachin didn’t have a choice to fail. There was a little story floating around about Sachin’s susceptibility against leg spinners bowling from around the wicket. His dismissal to Rawl Lewis in Sharjah a few months before seemed to have given it some credence too. And you don’t count on Taylor/Warne to miss out on that, do you?

As if the pressure of playing a series against Australia was not enough, Sachin had the added pressure of taking his rightful place in the pantheon of all-time greats. A failure in the Warne-litmus test would have been catastrophic. He could have played it safe, nudged around, grafted runs , secured his status, before launching an attack. But that’s for lesser mortals. He sensed the grandness of the battle; he wanted to take it head on. He prepared himself for it weeks ahead. And then he did something unusual. He captained Bombay in the tour match against Australia, and launched one of the most brutal attacks on Warne and almost single-handedly won the match. In a three day match, a city team beat the ‘unofficial’ world champions of the day. Now that is “wrapping the wrists around history’s collar and throttling it into submission”.

When the bandwagon moved to Chennai for the first test, Warne settled the scores by dismissing Sachin for four in the first innings. Australia took a 71 runs lead. Sachin walked out again, at effectively 44/2 , the contest was absolutely hanging in the balance, and so was his personal duel with Warne. He took both of them by the scruff of their necks and slogswept them over deep mid-wicket with utter disdain. There was only winner from there on, both in the team and the individual contest.

I have merely quoted a couple of instances here. Out of his 51 test hundreds, at least 25 of them would be ‘clutch innings’ and add a few non-hundred specials as well. And there's also the little matter of his ODI career! Purely at an individual level, there’s not another batsman anywhere close to Sachin in clutch situations, leave alone being better. To marginalize the whole debate into a solitary ‘did it lead to a victory or not?’ is a rather shallow argument in the context of a team sport in general, and cricket in particular.