Root and Tendulkar: Two great players and their motto that has enriched the sport

Watching Sachin Tendulkar play his final Test innings in Mumbai, I turned to a friend and said confidently, “No one will ever break his aggregate record because no one can score 15,000-plus runs given the international schedule and franchise cricket, nor play 200 Tests.” Twelve years later, it appears I may have been wrong on one count, possibly both. One of Tendulkar’s contemporaries, England’s Joe Root, needs 1,644 runs to overtake him. He was younger than Tendulkar was at the 14,000-run mark.

Root turns 36 in December and might know that Tendulkar played 34 Tests after turning 37 (scoring 2,474 runs). Root will not need as many to overtake the Indian. An interesting catch-me-if-you-can is guaranteed between the greatest batters their respective countries have produced.

Longevity is an important measure of greatness. It speaks to skill, form, fitness, consistency, motivation, adaptability, goal-setting, and to a lesser degree, luck. I thought Tendulkar would struggle a few years after an elbow surgery had made it difficult for him to lift even a cup of tea, leave alone a cricket bat. Yet he had an amazingly productive run thereafter, digging deep into his reserves as a player who was the among the best the world had ever seen. Motivation, like faith, can move mountains.

Athletes slow down as they grow older, it’s a natural process. The power of the mind might reduce the speed of decline and extend a career. Then the unquantifiables take over. Motivation, mainly, but also the stomach for constant physical punishment, and keenness to break records and place your achievements beyond the reach of a generation or two at least.

Pressures of captaincy

Not surprisingly, captaincy can have a negative effect. Tendulkar didn’t enjoy it, although he had the best batter in the world — himself — in the team. “I even contemplated moving away from the sport completely,” said Tendulkar of his struggles with captaincy.

Root has said he had “an unhealthy relationship” with captaincy. Ben Stokes took over and briefly changed English cricket with the ‘Bazball’ style of attacking cricket he had developed with coach Brendon McCullum. Root loved batting in the new style, exhibiting strokes that had been dormant. After Stokes announced his retirement, Root was given the holding job while Harry Brook served his apprenticeship, and this time he relished the job. Perhaps he might yet give us the adult version of Bazball whether he leads or not.

As his career was winding down, Tendulkar had a couple of goals — playing 200 Tests, the 200th and final at home in Mumbai, and scoring a century of international centuries. Halfway through his career, Sunil Gavaskar had suggested that anything fewer than 15,000 Test runs for a man of Tendulkar’s talent would count as a failure, although he phrased it more gently. Records and figures are an inherent part of Indian cricket, but not so deeply ingrained in the English psyche.

Root’s admiration for Tendulkar is genuine. He told The Athletic this year, “It’s remarkable what Sachin Tendulkar achieved in the game. You have to believe me when I say that to even be in the conversation with him is enough for me. The guy made his Test debut before I was born and played in my Test debut! His longevity in itself is remarkable…”

When Root overtook Ricky Ponting (13,378) to become the second highest run-getter in Tests, Tendulkar said, “To have gone past 13,000 runs is a remarkable achievement, and he’s still going strong. When I saw him for the first time in Nagpur in 2012 during his debut Test, I told my teammates that they were watching the future captain of England. What impressed me most was the way he was able to assess the wicket and how he rotated the strike. I knew at that very moment that he would be a big player.”

“You always want to represent your country in the best possible light. (We must) be really good role models and good human beings.” That might have been something Tendulkar said (and probably did in different ways), but it is Root speaking on his return to captaincy. The crown, if it does pass, will not find a more honourable man to wear it.